."V-^^^^ 



•V-i^Su^'/^ 




•^mm^. 






w 

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.A. 



Canuck 
down south 




BY... 

ARTHdR WEIR 



MONTREAL. : 

Printed by John Lovell & Son 



T. G. Roddick, Esq., M.P., M.D.C.M. 
LL.D., &c. 

My friend, I set it down with pride, 
" My Friend," without whom I had died, 
You, one of Nature's tireless police, 
Who sent me forth, the Golden Pleece 
Of health to find, will find herein 
How I that priceless boon did win. 
And, as my humble work you read 
With patience (patients are your meed) 
, ^ ^ Before you reach the end, you may 
'•«* ••! .T^egcft yJQij ^adej me h'd^d ajvftf'' 
' ' * • If«notj awd yoii Jire g]g<5 fo;finfl 

^^ Mv health more robust than my mind, 
[.•)•• . lAvii if llxe.*f olutnt* pleasfeS Jy ©U^ 



•TalteSf-tltri^ IK)^]»lf youj flyu*. 



A. W. 



-d3 






fs 



^ 






On the Trail of the Voyageur . . j 

Across the Prairie . ♦ . -ii 

Over the Divide ... _g 

In Arcadia .... q. 

In the Sierra j2. 

Roughing It . . . , i^y 

Derringer Dick, the Bicychst • .178 



OTHER WORKS BY THE SAM|E AUTHOR. 



Pleura de Lys and other Poems- 

The Komance of Sir Eichard, Sonnets and 
other Poems- 

The Snowflake and other Poems- 

From Paddle to Propeller, a history of 
Transportation in Canada (nearly 
ready). 



gigaogatjggcgi^ KSt^KSfi^gogsf igstng^jg^ogsg a 



CHAPTER I. 
On the Trail of the Voyageur. 



When ray friends heard that I was or- 
dered south for the winter, they remem- 
hered not mine offences. One estimable 
lady sent me a tract on Sudden Death, 
and a bachelor friend came forward 
with a bottle of his favorite Scotch. 
It was evident; that both found in me a 
lack of spiritual consolation, which 
they proffered acoording to their lights. 
A third friend termed my physiciams 
quacks because they had not adopted a 
certain system of treatment, and a 
fourth called them quacks because he 
thought they had. Within a week I had 
prescriptions enough from non-profes>- 
slonals to establish a druggist in trade, 
and there was not a health resort on 



A CaiiiK-k (lovii F^nifth. 

the face of the globe that some one did 
uot beseech me to go to and some one 
else with equal vehemence appeal to me 
to avoid. 

It would only renew the controversy 
were 1 to state why certain i lacee 
were rejected. We decided upon Califor- 
nia because there we would have no un- 
bearable heat r.or dangerous fevers, be- 
cause we had known its curative power 
in the case of one dear to us, and be- 
cause there, across three thousand miles 
of continent, faces awaited us expectant- 
ly that we had never hoped to see again, 
the face of Diogenes among them. The 
last consideration went for much with 
my physicians, who knew that cheerful- 
ness is the best tonic and welcome com- 
radeship better than hypodermics. 

The Princess sent for her mother, who 
enjoys the privilege of being my mother- 
in-law. Only a base mind would sug- 
gest that this was for the purpose oi 
reconciling me to leaving the courtry.. 
my mother-in-law being among tne few 
who see none but my good points. She 
Is so pretty and so nice in every wey 



On the Trail of tlie Yoyageur. 

that, if needs were, I could without re- 
gret treat her as Max O'Rell tells me 
he treated his in earlier days. 

"My wife," said that witty French- 
man, ''invited her mother to visit us 
when we were but a week back from 
our honeymoon. Do you think I ob- 
jected ? Not I; I said her presence was 
necessaiT to complete my happiness, at 
which my wife raised her eyebrows. My 
mother-in-law came, and I did not ne- 
glect her, as some men would have done. 
I took her to cor certs, theatres — with a 
petit souper a. *:erwai'ds — and, in the af- 
ternoons, for long drives. And I left my 
wife at home. In one little week my mo- 
ther-in-law had departed for her charm- 
ing home, and I have not seen too much 
of her since. My wife looks after that. 
She has great tact, I have none." 

My mother-in-law came, and she and 
tbe Princess began rifling the house like 
experienced burglars, stood upon their 
heads in trunks, gave me long lists of 
articles to be brought from town, and 
discussed bi asses, blouses, reveres and 
what not, until from being the certne of 



A Canuck down South. 

the projected flitting I sank to such 
insignificance that I began to fear that 
I would l»e accidentally left behind un- 
less I packed myself away in a band- 
box. 

The day before we left I came home 
and foiird the two sitting beside a pile 
of trunks, with that contented look 
upon their faces which a good woman 
wears when she has crammed the last 
movable thing in the house into the last 
possible corner of her trunk, I said: 

"Are you sure you are leaving noth- 
ing behind ?" 

"Nothing." 

"Six trunks, about 150 pounds each, 
saiy seven hundred in all. Do you know 
that it will cost us over thirty-five dol- 
lars for extra baggage?" 

"What ! ! !" 

"We are allowed 150 pounds of bag- 
gage to each ticket, that's three hund- 
red, and we pay nine cents per pound for 
the rest. Is my calculation apjiroxim- 
ately correct ?" 

I thought I was having my revenge for 
their neglect and I enjoyed the situation; 



On the Trail of the Voyageur. 

that is, until the Princess spoJce. She 
said: 

"Well, of all the useless men — why 
didn't you tell us that a week ago ?" 

I knew better than, to argue with Dfy 
mother-in-law there. I merely said, with 
a fime sarcasm, that was utterly thrown 
away: 

"Don't see what you can take, but 
what you can leave behind." And then I 
fled. I was an invalid, and those two 
women might have wanted me to help 
them pack. 

Tearfully, and with many protests 
against the iniquity of railroad mono- 
polies the Princess and her mother fce- 
gea their task anew, and actually man- 
aged to leave out a few pounds. Much 
of the rest, consisting of household lin- 
en, cut'cry and bocks a crartky s'udect 
thought he could not do without (I 
didn't mention my name, did I ?) we 
ultimately decided to bocs up and send as 
freight at about one-third the cost. 
This is a great scheme, and I do not 
charge anything for making it public. 
By all means, if you are ever going to 



JL Canuck down South. 

California, and have extra baggage, send 
it by freight, and you will probably get 
it again in time to ship it back, if you 
have any luck. Our boxes were three 
months getting to California, and they 
did not go tourist, either. They got as 
far as the States in pursuance of Horace 
Greeley's advice, and then some brilliant 
intellect ordered them back to Toronto 
because a man with a name like mine 
had lost one trunk somewhei-e between 
Parkdale and Kalamazoo, or some other 
points equally on the line to California, 
ar^ although he said my boxes were 
not his trunk, that they were consigned 
neither from nor to the same place as 
his trunk, the intelligent freight agent at 
Parkdale, or wherever the boxes lay, 
kept them, either because he thought the 
man would take them as a compromise, 
or because the freight hadn't been paid 
on them back from the States, or for 
some reason too deeply sented in the grey 
matter he called his brain, for common 
mortals to comprehemi. Anyway, it ne- 
xer seemed to have entered his head 
that he had any reason to send them on 



On the Trail of the Yoijageur, 

to their destination as speedily as pos- 
sible, with perhajs an apology. After 
we arrived in California and began to 
worry the company about the boxes, 
we never ceased to have a source of in- 
terest and the occasion for a walk to the 
post of x^e. We had letters from the gen- 
eral manager down to the office boy in 
Montreal, letters from Port Huron, let- 
ters from I.os Angeles, from the Cus- 
tom's houses, from the Secretary of 
State, the British consul, the Ambassa- 
dor at Washingtoii, and the Foreign 
and Colonial secretaries at London. At 
least, if we didn't hare them, we might 
have had them for the writing. We did 
get some of thi «e, referring to "vours of 
the — th,"' ''Please refer to our No. 117- 
459A, in replying," and so on. Some- 
times we would hear that the boxes had 
been located at one place (whence they 
had started) sometimes at another, then 
the next letter would take it all back 
and inform us that the boxes would be 
immediately enquired after, as though 
that was the first the railroads had 
heard of them. There were four systems 



A Canuck down South. 

over which the boxes had to pass, ard 
each railroad was ferverishly hunting af- 
ter them. Sometimes we'd hear of a hold 
up on the line and the Princess was sure 
the boxes were stolen, next there would 
be an accident, of course the boxes must 
be in it, and so foith. TJltimaiely tele- 
grams began to pour in, and the last one 
declaring that they had at last been lo- 
cated at Toronto arrived five minutes 
after they had been depc sited on the sta- 
tion platform under the palms at Santa 
Anita. Next to getting freight through 
on time is the fun of hunting it up when 
it fails to connect. By all means send 
your belongings to California by freight, 
if you desire ar interest in life and have 
a few months to live. In justice to the 
company, I must say this took place 
some years ago. Matters are much bet- 
ter now, and freight reaches California 
within three weeks. 

In undertaking any long journey the 
traveller had best act upon the adage al- 
ready quoted to leave what he can be- 
hind, and to remember that it is usually 
as cheap and far more convenient to 



On the Trail of the Yoyageur. 

make his purchases not where he is, but 
where he is going. This is particularly 
true of long railway journeiys. We found 
California prices on the average quite as 
reasonable as prices in Canada. As to 
clothing, baggage and like matters on 
the overland train, they will be men- 
tioned hi the proper place. I will merely 
premise that we acted ow the principle 
that the hoiding of one section did not 
entitle us to overflow into a second. 

The day of departure came at last. I 
think women always laugh in their 
sleeves when they hea^ man styled the 
lord of creatior.. We were going to Cali- 
fornia for my health, and I should have 
been the most important one in the 
party. With the exception of as brisk a 
stag party in town the day before as my 
debilitated frame could enjoy, I was not 
in it, as the phrase is. The womer. 
hung aboiit the Princess's neck. There 
was not enough of her to go round, but 
when I meekly expressed my willingness 
to supply the deficiency I was grandly 
scorred. I was, however, permitted to 
get on the train at the fag end of the 



A Cainirk flown Soiiih. 

prrcession, for which I was truly thank- 
ful. 

I waited for the blue to snine again 
through the rain that dimmed the Prin- 
cess's eyies; then I said: 

"Considering- that I am expected to die 
and go to heaven and never see them 
again, those girls might have said good- 
bye to me." 

The Princess said: 

"Mother did not forget how sick you 
are." 

"What did she say :" 

'^She said I always did look pretty 

in l>lack." 

Et tu Brute. 
******* 

The train had stopped for us by spec- 
ial request at Lachine, where we had 
been sojourning, Lachine the old Yoy- 
ageur depot, whence these bcld and ener- 
getic men ventured by canoe and snow- 
shoe into the distant wilds of the far 
West, peopled by savage Indians, the 
bison and the bear. Not far from the sta- 
tion whence we embarked still stands 
tlie old Hudson Bay fort, and yonder 



10 



On the Trail of the Toijagcur. 

lake that is gleaming throngn the an- 
timiDr-tiiited foliage has rippled many a 
time and oft bereath the blade of paddle 
or of oar, as? \A-ith soiig and chorus the 
picturesque voyageurs bent to the 
stroke, en route for the far reaches of the 
Ottawa or the equally tumiiltuous ra- 
pids of the Upper St. Lawrence. We are 
at 8te. Aniie almost before we are well 
sottled in our luxurious seats, and here 
are the dashing surges that Tom Moore 
sung of, on whose unbrageous brlnt the 
voyageurs made their first bivouac upon 
their western journey. Alas, the voyageur 
is gone, and his place is filled by. yonder 
wood-scow sailor man, who sits, smok- 
ing his elay pipe, upon the long tiller, 
while drowsy horses draw his craft 
through the lock. We are on the trail of 
the voyageur, and shall follow it for 
some thirteen hundred miles. He was 
months on the route; we shall do it 
easily in sixty hour?, and have time to 
see Chicago. 

We began our journey a little after 
nine in the morning, and all througli tfhe 
daylight hours were speeding througli a 



A Cavuck dote II South. 

fertile and proaperous country towards 
Toronto. Hamlets, towns and village?, 
with now and then a city, rose on the 
horizon, approached, received as and 
receeded along the narrowing lines of 
9teel. Forests ar.d meadows and low 
hills, with at times glimpses of the sil- 
ver river rushing down to its tryst with 
the sea. fields where the yellow wheat 
had waved and been cut down, 
■fields where cattle browsed, still 
makirg food for Britain's hungry mill- 
ions, flashed upon us, and at times we 
saw the smoke of manufactories in the 
distance, hives of industry, i-eached by 
these same bands of steel, or tributary 
lines. Above us shone the clear October 
sun through air just touched with frost, 
not cold but bracing, so bracing that 
even I, who knew the rigor of the ap- 
proaching winter wondered why I should 
be compelled to leave so fair a land, so 
fine a climate. 

How different it all was from what 
we were shortly to see. Here old mother 
earth's brown ribs do not lie bare to the 
sweep of wind, she Is still clad in a 



On the Trail of the Vopaoeur. 

mantle almost ,^reen. Here is no i arched 
soil, thirsting for the rnin that never 
comes, every farmstead has its winding 
stream. Some even have their limits set 
by majestic rivers whose volume changes 
not but is fed uefailijigly the whole year 
through by brooks and tributaries that 
gather the water drops among still pri- 
meval forests aaid' Laurentian lakes sil- 
ent and solitary amid the hills of 
gneiss. 

If it was a land surveyor with ^.. 
well thumbed copy of the Oddesy who 
gave the iState of New York its Utica, 
Troy and other classical names, to what 
eiie do we owe the ii-ames of the sta- 
tions and towns along the five hundred 
miles of Canadian territo.ry between 
Montreal and Sarnia j Shall we call it 
the epic of life ? Here we have Lacbine, 
the record of La Salle's di'eam, Vau- 
dreuil, the last French Governor of Caai- 
ada, Iroquois, name of dread import, 
Lansdowne, a recent Governor, Colborne, 
Grafton, Newcastle. Hamilton, great 
names all, dear to Canadians. Brock- 
ville, named after onr immortal general, 



13 



A Canuck iloicii SoiiiJt. 

we salute thee. Push on, like him and 
his brave York volunteers. But staj, 
eiLPely we are no longer in Canada, but 
rather in some reconstructed Europe, 
where the lion lies down with the lamb ! 
Here are Breslau, Berlin, Petersburg, Ba- 
den and Hamburg, with Paris not far 
off. O Kaiser Wilhelm I is this fair town 
your capital, and where is Unter den 
Linden ? And thou, O Czar, we can 
give you snow and ice and jingling bells 
in their season, but neither serf nor nihil- 
ist. Beyond Hamburg what comes ? Who 
but S>^akespeare, only six miles away, 
with visions following as a matter of 
course, of Stratford, St. Paul's, St. 
Mary's, London and the Thames. 

The voyageur did not thread the path- 
less woods, but preferred the river, not- 
withstanding the foaming cataracts at 
the Cascades, Cedars, Coteaii and Long 
Sault, to say nothing of the scattered 
rapids above. Wlmt though he spent 
days in the toil, now in, now out of the 
canoe, the swirling torrent pouring 
shoulder high about his stalwart form, 
were there not calm reachee, with gentle 



14 



On the Trail of the Voyage ur. 

current, bright with water lilies, where 
the trees bent down to touch the mir- 
roring crystal and the deer defiled 
through wooded lanes. Were thei-e not 
moonlit nights^ when he might lie 
under the gleaming stars beside the roaa*- 
ing camp fire, upon a couch of freshly 
cut pine boughs, odorous and soft, and 
spin his yaxns of Indian battles, strange 
discoveries io the wilderness and deeds 
of heroism and skill in rapids where 
jagged rocks stood eager to rip the canoe 
open in a brutal hari-kari. Ah, we like 
the luxury of the Pullman, but apart 
from the sariirg of time. I sometimes 
question whether our forbears did not 
enjoiy quite as much luxury as we, with 
all our modern improvements. 

The voyageur was an employe of the 
fur company, the descendant ot the cour- 
ier de bois. We shall be in the haunts 
of these men as far as the Missouri, and 
they often ventured far beyond. In Kan- 
sas we sha] traverse territory full of 
Canadian romance. On our route we 
could pass through towns, such as De- 
troit, which were founded by Montreal- 



15 



A Canuck doicn South. 

ers, shall follow or cross old portage 
paths, such as at Toronto, where there 
was a portage long before there was a 
settlement, a portage that gave its 
name to the town that was first named 
York. We shall pass: E ngston, outlet of 
a series of lakes and rivere long used by 
the Indian and now the Rideau canal, 
built as a military work by the British 
Government, under the supervision of 
Lt.-Col. By, perhaps the only large can- 
al ever built in which the engineer-in- 
chief could complain that he had only 
on© theodolite, and that not a good one. 
Ir. this well fortified harbor have rot- 
ted large ships of war, built in Eng- 
land, brought over in sections and car- 
ried np the river by the voyageurs past 
thirty miles of rapids, at a cost in some 
cases of over sixty thousand dollars. 
But, shade of President Jefferson, they 
helped to disappoint you in the cam- 
paign, of which you had said "the con- 
quest of Canada will be only a matter 
of marchingc" Gentlemen of Detroit, we 
do not grudge you those captured can- 
non with grandiloquent inscription in 



IR 



On the Trail of the Yoyageur. 

front of your city hall; you haye the 
cannon, we held your city; and so are 
quits. Yonder monument in the blue dis- 
tance, within sound of Niagara, is it not 
on Queenston heights ? Brother Johna- 
than you are a brave man, and a deter- 
mined, but you have fourtd this northern 
thistle somewhat stinging in your grasp, 
and I fancy that it was not fear but re- 
spect and perhaps a little family pride 
that always made you draw back and 
not put your whole heart and hate and 
power into the blows you dealt us. Not 
so easily were jou driven back or dis- 
couraged in your own great war, where 
you conscience was with you, as it has 
never been in any attempt upon your 
northern brother. 

We reached Toronto late in the even- 
ing, and the customs officer with great 
courtesy examined our baggage, which 
the railroad officials with equal courtesy 
dragged from tOie luggage van. We had 
no claim on these offices as our trunks 
should either have been examined at 
Montreal before starting or have waited 
for the regular examination at dead of 



A Canuck down South. 

night at Port Huron. And then the train 
went on, and we escaped the danger of 
an experience the like to which for stag- 
nation and petty, narrow annoyances 
bred largely of religious or rather theo- 
logical intolerance, is, I am sure, not 
to be found elsewhere on the continent, 
nor anywhere in history sirce the days of 
the Commonwealth of England or the 
blue laws of the New England States; I 
mean, of course, a Sunday in Toronto, 
where the street cars were stopi>ed and 
a man could do nothing but sit still and 
grow, and rot make any noise about it 
either. Toronto is the place where truly 
good people do not let their hens lay 
nor their cows gire milk or, a Sunday, 
and have a sincere regret that the Crea- 
tor did not so arrange their anatomy as 
to make their herirt and lungs cease 
working during the twenty-four hours. 

Toronto has dozens of connections" by 
rail and water with all parts of the 
country; time was when the legislature 
conld not assemble there for lack of 
communications. Within the memory of 
livinor men a walk from Toronto to 



18 



Ou the Trail of the Voyageur. 

Montreal was a recognized way of mak- 
ing the joumeiy, and people still talk of 
the wonderful stage journey made by 
Lord Sydenham in 1840. It was truly 
a record breaker. At six o'clock on Mon- 
day morning, February 18th, the four 
in hand started, William Weller on the 
box. What visions the name alone con- 
jures up ! All day the light sleigh glid- 
ed along, now crisping the snow, now 
drawn over bare roads or through 
mud where the February thaw had done 
its work. Noon came, and night, the 
tired horses were replaced by others at 
frequent intervals, and still Mr. Weileir 
held the ribbons. Darkness covered the- 
face of the country the stars came out 
amid flying clouds, and in all the circle 
of the horizon there was nothing seen 
but the naked trees and the flying 
ground, and nothing heard but the musi- 
cal beat of the hoofs of the flying steeds. 
Immovable, wrapped in his great coat, 
the sleepless driver sat, till, at twenty 
minutes to six on Tuesday afternoon, he 
threw down his reins in the yard of the 
Exchange Hotel on St. Paul street, 



19 



A Canuck down South. 

Montreal, and was helped from the box 
where he had eat for thirty-five hours 
and forty minutes and guided his gallop- 
ing horses over three hundred and sixty 
miles of mother earth. Ben Halliday 
wasn't **in it," Hank Monk, who drove 
Horace Greeley and jolted the buttons off 
his coat, made no such record as William 
Weller, and I, who am going where 
Hank Monk is still talked of, am proud 
to place our Canadiar, record iu evi- 
dence. 

Canadians are lacking m one thing lor 
which the United Statesian is noted, the 
art of advertising. I do not believe that 
there is any country which has done so 
much as Canada, and at the same time 
talked of it so little, unless it be our 
motherland, and her natives make up for 
this by an air which plainly denotes that, 
if they do not boast of one achiefvement, 
it is because they are perfectly convinced 
of their superiority in all directions. 
Mortreal was the first harbor in the 
world to be lighted by electricity. Can- 
ada sent the first ocean steamship on her 
voyage, has the most extensive railway 



20 



On the Trail of fhe Voyageur. 

system In the world under one manage- 
ment, the most stupendous canal system 
the world has ever seen, the finest bank- 
ing system. She has more ocean shippirg 
than the United States, which could not 
have even what it has but for the sail- 
ors it draws from Newfoundland and 
Canada. Canada had to lend her vaya- 
geura to ensure the success of the Nile 
expedition, her oarsmen have been and 
her yachtsmen are world's champions. 
She has had the strongest man in the 
world, and my lady friends say she has 
the har.dsomest. She has civil servants 
who think nothing of making expedi- 
tions that Franklin or Nansen would 
have wrltteoi a book on, and they send 
In only about a printed page. She has 
mounted police who keep in order In- 
dians the United Start:es permits to 
massacre standing armies. She has gold 
mine?! that surpass those which produced 
the forty niners. Slie has wheat fields 
that rival thiose of Eussia, she has the 
highest mountains, the noblest glaciers, 
the most fertile plains, and the most ma- 
jestic rivers on the continert. She has 



21 



A Canuck down South. 

climates that equal those of the cham- 
paigne country or Siberia; she has coasts 
more worderful thcxD the Norwegian 
fjords. She has the deepest river and 
the oldest mountairs in the world, and 
her shores witnessed the dawn of life. 
Her history should he the envy of na- 
tions. The stand at Therm oj viae was a 
rout compared with Bollard's stand on 
the Ottawa; the legendary founding of 
Rome is prosaic compared with that of 
Montreal. I^ven the defence of Lucknow 
is paralleled in Canada, and by a woman 
at that, Madame de la Tour, who wo- 
man-like afterwards married her enemy 
— and perhaps was duly avenged. Our 
poets have no living superiors in the 
United States and but few in Great 
Britain, our statesmen have been a 
match for those of the United States, the 
most overbearing and grasping in the 
world; we have lent other countries men 
who have added lustre to their annals. 
Fen wick Williams, of Kars, is one. We 
have had singers like Albani, sculptors 
like Hebert, musiciare like Deseve, — but 
why prolong the list. I have not men- 



22 



On the Trail of the Yoyageur. 

tioned the tithe of what entitles Canada 
to resi)ect among nations, but if we do 
not show pride ourselves who is going 
to proclaim our virtues ? It is not so 
long since I read an immigration pamph- 
let, published by the Quebec Govern- 
ment. There was not one particle of fine 
writing in it, scarcely even a reference 
to our cities. There werp statistical 
tables, there were no pictures of wonder- 
ful beets, of lader/ fruit trees, of charm- 
ing land sea pp^. no attempt whatever to 
root the intending settler to the soil, or 
weave around him the glamor of our his- 
tory and our institutions. To read that 
pamphlet, one would imagine that Can- 
ada was still a wilderness. What is it 
but the lack of proper advertising that 
even to this day leaves the average 
Briton under the impression that the 
grizzly bear waiiders through the sub- 
urbs of Montreal and that he who 
returns home late at night in Toronto 
may be found scalped on his own door- 
step In the morning : I myself have seen 
in the London Times the announcement 
that the Governor-General embarked at 



A. Canuck down South. 

Ottawa on the steamship for England, 
and I have frequently seen British let- 
ters adidressed Montreal, Ca^nada, United 
States. Fellow Canadians, modest like 
myself, I pray you for the love of your 
country, do not hide her light ur-der a 
bushel. Go through the United States 
west, see the parched deserts, swept by 
cyclones, that are advertised as the fin- 
est grazing lands in the world, mark the 
dead and dying cattle on the plains, 
which have neither food nor drink, see 
the gaunt hollow-eyed Britisher who 
tries to live on an ash heap a thousand 
miles from anywhere; and advertise, ad- 
vertise, advertise, if only for the sake of 
humanity. 

Here is a sample of the average 
Englishman. 

"Bai Jove, you Canadians awre qwite 
right to make a law against scalpers' 
tickets. It fu^eezes ma blood, bai Jove, to 
think that some blasted Indian may mur- 
der me fow ma ticket, and then sell it, 
you know." 

My mind slowly returned to sublun- 
ary aHalrs. There were voices outside 



24 



On the Trail of the Voyageur. 

the car window, the cars shuditefi, en- 
gines coughed and panted, aaid we slow- 
ly wenit forwiard. 1 lo'oked out, anid 
there wais a fainrt twinkle of lights in 
the darlaness, aind then a curtain oi ut- 
ter gioom was drawn over the wind'ow, 
while a strange subterraoiean rumble 
came to my ears. My mind, only hialf 
awake, reverted to trips to the JPtort- 
lanid coast tlirough the piortals of the 
Victoria Bridge, and then as the rumh- 
llng continiued, amd no sudden and brief 
flash of light came, such as one niotes 
In pasisihg through that tunnel in mid- 
air, each time a pier is reached, it slow- 
ly dawned upon me that we were pass- 
ing through the tunnel irom Sarnla t^o 
Port Huron, undier a tide whieh upbeiaris 
a moTO voluminous shippKng thajn passes 
even through the Suez Canal. Here Is 
another little umadvertised work of Ca- 
nadians, compared with which the 
famed Hoosac Tunnel (jalso Taullt by 
Canadians, it may be memtiomeid), is hiut 
a mole hole. The St. Clair Tummel is 
nearly two miles in length; the Hloosiac 
Tunnel is only 2504 feet ; the St. 



25 



A Canuck down South. 

Gothard Tunnel is 914 miles; but there 
is none In America to compiare with the 
St. Clfiir, and n^one anjywhere so exten- 
siTe which is carried undier water, if we 
except the insigaiificant water-pipe whioh 
Chicajgo carried out into Lake Michi- 
gan to draw a supply that is not pol- 
luted by the sewerage of that wicked 
and progressive city. 

We were due to arrive in Uhicago 
somewhere about !en to ihe morning, 
but we did not draw up at Dearborn 
Station until aiter two on Sunday. By 
thiat time I stood in need of a shave. 1 
would not mention this insiginiflcant de- 
tail, only that my search for a barber 
revealed the straaige fact that the skin 
game is not played in Chicago on thiat 
day of the week. At least I thought 9o 
until, as I was returning to the depot, 
I was stopped by a gentlemanly-look- 
ing man, who drew me confidentially 
aside. 

"Sir," he said; "excuse my addressing 
you, but I have just received a telegram 
that my mother is dying in New York, 
and I have nothing but my gold watch'. 



26 



On the Trail of the Voyageur. 

Now, if yiotu will take the watcii — it is 
WiOrth sixtiy dOllaorsi — ^and give me twen- 
ty-five, fny dying mwtheir's blessing will 
rest upon the man wbo enaJbles Ioj&p fl(an 
to reach her bedside." 

All is not gold that glitters in Chi- 
cago. 

A few moments laiber, a well-dresseid 
man rushed up tjo me and shook mo 
violently by the hand. 

"Well," he said; "this ie ft sight for 
sore eyes. How did you ever come here, 
John J. Aitkins, of Indianapolis ? I 
haveai't sett ^yes du you for three years." 

I said; 

"I'm really very sorry, but my niame's 
not Aitkiiis, and I never was in India- 
napolis. My name's Bloidgett, Isa^ac K. 
Blodgett, and I come from Austra'da. 
I'm going bo the Alask'a gold mines." 

With profuse lapologles, and the assur- 
ance t(hat I was like enough to John 
Aitktns to be his twin brother, my new 
frlenid left me. Some tHne later, when I 
was looking f!or a cab to drive about 
the city, I was again seized by the hamd. 

"Well, I never. Can this be B'todgeftt, 



27 



A Canuck down South. 

my xjld friend Istaae Blodgett? What on 
©artli brouigihrt yiou to Chicago. And 
how are all the folk in Australta? I bet 
you're comiing here to d'atoble in our 
Alaska mines. Yon kn.ow me, of course? 
I tell yon n.ow, you don't get out of 
this town without seeing the elephant. 
How do you do? I'm just wild at 
meeting you!" 

"Excuse me," I said, "I'm very sorry, 
but my name is not Blodgett, and I 
never was in Australia. My name's Ait- 
klns — John J. Altkins, of Indianapo- 
lis." 

The effusive gentleman looked at me 
a moment. Then his left eye closed 
spasmodically, in what looked suspi- 
ciously like a wink', and he left me sud- 
denly. 

We had a poor meal m the staition 
restanrant, amid a gAod deal iof billings- 
gate from the lady in attendance on 
the wometn and children's waiting- 
room (I hope I have her title right, or 
she will probably exercise her tongue 
further), and then we set forth to see 
the sights. 



On the Trail of the Voyageur. 

From the roof of the Masioinic Temple, 
twetnty-onie stories hlglh (302 feet), a 
fair, if eonfused, idea is had of the »ity. 
Lake Michigan noils its greien waters on 
the one hamd, and everywhere else are 
vast building's and interminiable streets, 
dimly seen, even on that Sunday after- 
noon, through the smoke that seethes 
and billows over the whole town, 
quionehing the sunlight land miaklng 
e\ierythlnjg look like a Dutoh picture. 
Fork packers have discovered the secret 
of (the old masters, such is civilization. 
We were still on territoi>y pre^©mi>ted 
by Canadians. The town is full of theni 
now, and in the ages past her© cann* 
Jean Nicolett, and crossed to tihe Missis- 
sippi. Here came LaSalle and Mar- 
quette ; here waved the fleur-de-lys, ajiid 
here the miass was sung. Earlier still, 
an extensive trade wias here, a trade 
terminated so long ago that we learn 
of it on'jy through excavations in Ohio 
mounds, yet it extended nortih, east, 
south and west, almiost to the confines 
of thie continent. 
A little before ten that evening two 



29 



A Canuck down South. 

very tired, adults and two still more 
tired clilldreii, boarded the Atcheson, 
Topeka & Santa Fe California Limited, 
bribed the portei to make up their 
berths, and slept a sleep that Argus 
might hare coveted. 










CHAPTER II. 
Across thk Prairie. 

•'It is all cliang-ecl now," said tlie Ar 
goiiaut; "time was when out West a 
pistol-pockeft was impenaitively \nec&s~ 
sary. To-ctay we only require a pockiet- 
pistol." 

"Man always has a waint," moralized 
the Capitalist. 

"Especially if he is a Britisher," said 
the Tail-twister. 

"If it were not so," reauarkfed the 
Lieutenant, with a sly ifnile, "our 
frierd, the Capitalist, would lose his 
vocation." 

I said nothing, nor did the other ten- 
derfeet offer a word. We had had our 
innings as far west as thie Missiouri, but 
since leaving Kansas City miodeisty had 
fallen upon us, which was rather a 
strange sensation. 



31 



A CoAiuck down South. 

The Argonaut w^as an elderly man 
now, ODje who had borne the brunt of 
early Ualiformia da,ys (they don't say 
Californlan in Califcxmia). He did not 
speak much — he belonged to days when 
a loose tongue was fatal, unless Ihtmg 
on a hair trigger — and when he did 
make a remark, it was epigrammatic as 
that of the derringer that had swung 
at his belt in the early fifties, and like 
that weapon, it usually let d;ay light 
through the subject, as, for example, 
the remark quoted above. 

We were on the Sajnta Fe California 
Limited, roUimg through Kansas, in the 
sunshine of a late October day, — Kan- 
sas dear to Caaiadians through its close 
association with our early fur-trading 
days, interestlug to scientists as an 
anciemt sea-bottojn, and the cemetery of 
geological monstrosities, valuable to 
the Capitalist through its wealth of 
gypsum and marbles, and hallowed in 
the eyes of the Argonaut as the portal 
through which a generation agio he 
had sought the New West. 

Our travelling companions were near- 



Across the Prairie, 

ly all typi&al. Tiiere w<as tlie Argonaut, 
going back for some unknown purpose 
to his early home ; the Uapitalist, with 
a new schefne in which to sink British 
capital, to which he had promised the 
extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers, 
or the turning of cactus deserts into 
ranch lands. There was the Tail-^twist- 
er, narrow, uneducated, save in the af- 
fairs of his own country, and still bit- 
terly remembering the days of 1776, 
which, he thought, formed a live issue 
yet in the policy of the two great na- 
tions. There was the Lileutenant, re- 
joining his company in some far-away 
fort among thie Indiams; and there were 
a few stalwart ne'er-do-wells, who had 
been shipped frojji England with a little 
money to retrieve their fortune and 
their fame, and who would probably 
end their days on a '^tittle fruit ranch 
high on the Sierra sides, mortgaged to 
the roof-tree, their ambition crushed by 
the dreamy, cloudless climate and dis- 
appointment. 

Alas, there were also others in high 
hai)e3, do'omed to extinstion, — others 



33 



2 Canuck down South. 

with flushed cheeks and tranapareait 
hands, with a racking coug-h, for which 
they were seeking ease and eure by flee- 
ing the wintry blasts of the east. Some 
were alone, but several had relatives to 
share their exile; and, as 1 looked upon 
them, I thought myself, indeed, an in- 
valid no i'M>nger, for among the blind 
the one-eyed man is king. 

But, such is the buoyancy of hop© 
and the restorative power of change of 
scene and interest, that we were o(ne 
and all the joUiest set of invalids ever 
seen. Cle\opatra may have wept on An- 
tony's shoulder as she heard the melan- 
choly "Remember, thou art mortal," 
and Caesar may have flinched at the 
phrase ere he went to his unexpected 
death ; imt, though there were few 
among us to whom those words might 
not significantly have been addressed, 
and notwithstanding that we knew the 
fatal yellow lantern might at any mo- 
ment flash out the sad intelligence of 
death or mute cry for medical aid 
through the night, as we rushed past 
the stations, we laughed and talked, 



34 



Across the Prairie. 

full of tiope and seemingly heedless of 
the progress of the dread malady, to ar- 
res.t which we had said farewell to 
friends and home, some of us for ever. 

One night, long after every one had 
retired, 1 went to the wasih-room to di- 
lute a little water with whiskey. In- 
stamtly, the recumbent porter sprang 
to his feet, and asked if 1 wanted as- 
sistance. As there was not much water 
in the mixtui'e, I replied that I thought 
that I could manage to get the "better 
of it myself, whereupon he sank back 
restfully, sa^ying; "1 thjought some on© 
was dying." That was a decided shock 
to me. It was disagreeable to have 
forced upon one in so strong a manner 
the fact that there might be a familiar 
face missing some morning; but, as indi- 
cating the hopefulness of consumptives, 
It would have been ludicruous had it 
not been pathetic, to see how anxiously 
each far-gone invalid asked his com- 
panions how they had rested during the 
night. He saw the mote; he could not 
see the beam. 
But it must not be thought that our 



35 



A Canuck down SoulJi. 

Pullman was an hospital, it is not of- 
teai that, even on such trains, the droad 
ma'ady is brought too forcibly before 
the eye. It is more frequently »o on the 
east bound trains, when some heart 
yearns homeward for a sight of haloed 
scenes, arnd contests every inch with 
death until the last sad wish has been 
accomplished. Our evenings in the 
smoking-room were among the pleasant- 
eet experiences of my life, and interest- 
ing as were the glimpses of life and 
scenery from the car windows, they 
were surpassed when the taciturn Ar- 
gonaut or the Lieutenant could he 
lured into conversation. 

From the instant we had erossed the 
Missouri, the Argonaut had been exhi- 
biting a suppressed excitement. 

"I kaow the signs," said the Capital- 
ist. "He's got the fever on him again. 
We're going over the old Santa Fe 
trail, and the love of California and 
the lust for gold have him once more, as 
torty years ago. He'll break out soon, 
and then you'll have some idea of the 
kind of boys that made the biggest half 
of this countiT." 



Across the Prairie. 

That evening, after I had superintend- 
ed the packing of the "enfant terrible" 
of our party in the "top drawer," as he 
persisted in calling the upper berth of 
our section, much to the porter's dis- 
gust, 1 entered the smoKing-room. The 
Capitalist winked at me, and nodded 
towards the Argonaut, who sat in th<i 
most comfortable corner. Then he l)&- 
gjRn to hum: 

I soon shall be in Frisco, 

And then I'll look all round, 
And when I see the gold ".uinps there 

I'll pick 'em off the groand , 
I'll scrape the mountains clean my boys, 

I'll drain the rivers dry. 
A pocket full of rocks bring home ; 

So, brothers, don't you cry. 

The Lieutenant and Tail-twister took 
up the refrain: 
Oh! California! 

That's the land for me. 
I'm bound for San Francisco, 
With my washbowl on my knee. 
The Argonaut roused himself. *'The 
railroad's good enough for California," 
he said: "for it can't take you any 



37 



A Canuck doioi South. 

further unless you want to swim. But 
it's killed the country between. Time 
was when the whole overland trail was 
settled and busy. Once 1 counted nigh 
five hundred teams within nine miles. 
From the Missouri to the Pacific ther« 
was one long procession. Twenty thou- 
sand people started in one body from 
Fort Laramie, in May, 1849. Some got 
to the very Sierra and turned back; 
aome got left in the desert and stayed 
there, and when the choleia caught up 
with us," — 

Here the old man stopped, and tne 
Tail-twister broke in: "It's the British- 
ers," be said. "They wanted California 
then, and they want it now. Look at 
them to-day. There isin't a horse in Los 
Angeles or Pasadena that hasn't it's 
tail docked ; theire isoi't a dinner-plate 
that was made outside of England. They 
sent the cholera then, and tihey come 
out here now, and put tneir moneiy imlfco 
everything — " 

"Hear, hear," cried the Capitalist, 
smiling over some luerry redollectiom of 
some such investment, in which the 
money had doubttless remained. 



Across the Prairie. 

"Ajnd then they think they should be 
elected mayor or alderman, or be pnt 
on the police force. Confiscate 'em, I 
say." 

We side-tracked the Tail-twister with 
some difficulty. 

'*It seems to me," said the Lieuten- 
ant, "that travelling this way is better 
than by prairie schooner, and quicker." 
"It's different," replied the Argonaut ; 
"but it's roughing it in another way. 
Here we are cooped up day and night, 
without a chanoe to stretch our legs, 
except for a few minutes at a station ; 
no sport, held up by the porter when- 
ever we speiak to hLn, bUckened by 
train smoke, blinded by dust, and have 
to wear a boiled shirt and high collar 
In all the heat, just because some lad(y 
with heir llap-dog is on board, aoid 
doesn't want the dog's manners contam- 
inated. Give me the old schxyoner, plen- 
ty of time and grub, ^and a good horse. 
What's yiour hurry in this world? You 
young fellows want to get there as soon 
as y,ou hlave started ; you might as well 
want to be bom bald-headed and with 



A. Canuck doicn South. 

spectacles. It's what comes between the 
beginning and the enri that makes liie. 
And, as for space! Why, sir, many a 
prairie schooner was almost as big as 
this car, and the outfit often cost over 
$5,000. I 'have seefn f 8,000 paid for the 
schooner alone, and $1,000 a pair for 
mules; and that waggon took a dozen 
yoke ; twenty thousand dollars with- 
out the whip and the yeller dog." 

I suppose I shjowed surprise, for th« 
Argonaut turned or me. 

"Ask ex-Postmaster-General J'ames if 
that ain't true. And ask him if the 
newspapers weren't printed on tissue 
paper to save overweight. They charg- 
ed five dollars a letter in those days, 
and extra on love letters. It was big 
money times; there wasn't a nickel or a 
dime west of the Mis&ourl." 

And so on amd so forth. The volcano 
was going, with frequent geyser-like ex- 
plosions, fnom the Capitalist ^and the 
Lieutenant. We did not get to bed till 
long after midmight. My last recollec- 
tion that night was of seeing the por- 
ter standing lon t<he rear platform, slow- 



40 



Across the Prairie. 

ly and regretfully dunnping ceptaln old 
soldiers rnto the diarkness of the voice^ 
less desert. 

It is not surprising tliat the Argo- 
naut was loqUiacDous om our first might 
out from Kans'as City, as we rattled 
through the scenes of his early days. 
We who had not teem participators in 
the opeaiing up of the West were not un- 
moved. The sight of a solitary cow- 
boy, long-haired, slouch hatted, big 
spurred, sitting firmly in his ornate 
Mexican saddle, and loping alomig on 
the prairie, bad led the ladies to indulgp 
In a WfaTimg of handkerchiefs, and, I 
fear, a s'y throwing of kisses that filled 
our hearts witih wrath; and had not the 
train been going, we would hjave got 
oiut aind siassed that cowboy, and some- 
body misrht have been hurt. He had 
astually the audacity to wave his glov- 
ed hand towards the Princess, who las- 
Bured me that she considered him highly 
Impertinent, though she did not clinch 
her hand, which is tne infallible sign ot 
resenting an ifisnlt. We had passetd 
Newton at dusk, now a quiet little 



41 



A Camick down South. 

town, but once a perfect hell on earth, 
where murder was the daily occupation 
of the population, and g-ambling and 
drinking smd other vices their nightly 
diverslom. When the much-meeded vigi- 
lance conijjiittee got to w'ork, it handed 
eleven men in one night, and would have 
hanged more had the posts held out. 
We had halted a moment at Dodge City, 
and tbe Argonaut haa had to drag forth 
a timid littie guide-book-devouring ten- 
derfoot from umder his berth, and as- 
sure him that the cowboys no longer 
shot holes in white shirts and tveo-Inch 
collars at that station. Strange as was 
everythimg to a tenderfoot, it was still 
diflacult to believe that we were actually 
hi the land sacred to boyhood as the 
scene of the most hairbreadth es-*- 
capes on reaoiT-d, and of the ultimate tri- 
umph ot truo love over the schemes ot 
the villaim and his bartd of tawny cut-^ 
throats. 

I have made no reference m far to th« 
women cm. board, except in connectioai 
with the cowboy. "J'hey did not form a 
coterie quite as we men did, since the 



42 



Across the Prairie. 

construction of even tlie PuUnnan car 
does not provide for such a cluD-rooim 
as we hiad in the smoker. Women laiust 
sit amiong the boxes, laind must put up 
with petty aninoyiainc^ of variuos kinds 
!rom the familiarity of a porter, or his 
Insolence, to drinklmg tepid instead of 
iced wiater, just Ttjecause we men need 
lee in the wash basin to keep jour iiquofrs 
cool. If wo;nein thoroughly understood 
the art of tipping, they would doubt- 
less suffer less in traveling, but they do 
aot. But of this hereafter . The JLieu- 
tenant's wife was there , he and sh& 
were the nabobs of the party, and occu- 
pied the state-room. There was the 
Princess, facile princeps, ol course, but a 
little too dignified to be able to show 
off all her accomplishmeaits before stran- 
gers, however agi'eeable, whofna she 
would iee .he llast of ii *ouir diays. The 
Princess is nrery Englisih,ve(ry miodest ana 
unassuming, amd very proud. AVi the 
other women hung on her neck when sne 
was leaving the train, and wavea their 
handkerchiefs out of the window &t her 
when she was gome, but of course I was 



43 



A Caimck down Sovth. 

with her, and besides she had always 
been ready to talk to the moping, help 
with a fretful child, ana laugh with the 
cheerful, notwithstanding her own fa- 
tigue aind two sturdy atoms of perpe- 
tual motion. Then there was a young 
wife going out with an invalid hus- 
band. Her's was a strange position. 
She had been s^o accustomed to having 
him pet her, thmK for ber, save her in 
things small and great, that she never 
quite got over the impressiom that she 
was the invalid and he the attentive 
nurse; aii;d he never tried to undeceive 
her. Many a ti)ne, in the night, when 
he should have been resting, I have seem 
him stealing down the aisle to get her 
a drink of water. H^r's was the first 
berth made up at nigbt, and the last 
In the morning. JLet us h-ope she woke 
to the situation in due time, for he was 
going fast. Halt the trouble in this 
world is broiUght about by not seeing 
things as they are. There are more peo- 
ple blind thiam selfish. 

The proverbial old maid was there. 
We thouglit she had a romance, for s'lie 



44 



Across the Prairie. 

was in perfeet health, and was always 
consnlting the time-table. There was 
nothing she liked better than to get a 
man, preferably a married man, out on 
the back platform and monopolize him. 
She caught the Lieutenant that way 
o[Dce, and for an entire morning he 
named, described and gave the story of 
every place and scene. The next mom- 
ing there was a marked coolness be- 
tween his wife amd the maiden lady, and 
a glare in his wife's eye every time she 
looked at him. All the virgin's bland- 
ishments were subsequently thrown 
away upon him, but she inveigled the 
Argonaut into what we had begun tlo 
term the chamber of horrors. Much to 
our surprise, he returned in five minutes, 
and upon our asking him how he man- 
aged to escape, replied, as he settled 
himself down for a comfortable smoke, 
that he hiad mereliy tofid her a sitory he 
had given us in the smioking-room the 
previous night. 

Robert Louis Stevensiom hias some uin- 
kind words to say of the officials on 
the line over which he passed on an im- 

.... ..-M? 

45 



A Canuck down South. 

migrant train. Our experieoace om the 
Limited was, of course, better, probal)- 
ly as much better as the differeoice in ex- 
peoises would certainly call for. But I 
cannot refrain from reeounting a little 
experience which I had which shiowed 
the Dower :f noney. We aad wired to 
Chicago for two lower berths, but had 
ultimately been compelled to take a sec- 
tion, which meant that a child would 
have to sleep at the risk of its neck 
somewhere contiguous to the roof. I 
had been assured thiat this could be rec- 
tified en route. On asking the comduc- 
tor itor a lower berth in&tead of the 
upper, and several lowers were empty, 
he instantly replied that he had not one 
to spare, that all were taken. Without 
urging him further, I slipped a bill into 
his hand, and he, on his part, not even 
turning away, or pretending to recon- 
sider the question, instantly made the 
change I had desired. The act was as 
barefaced as that of the restaurant wait- 
er who changes the label on a wlme 
bottle In your presence, to suit yxmr 
t'aste. I had a similar experience, with 



46 



Across the Prairie. 

the same result, with the porter. I hiad 
tipped him o/nce already, a large tip, 
as I tihought, but on the third day out 
I found that its influence was Just ex- 
piring. I couldn't get him to make up 
the children's berths at a reasonable 
hour ; he grumbled because they had 
left biscuit crumbs on the seat, and be- 
gan ro hint that the regulations of the 
company prohibited the use of alcohol 
lamps, a fact. I believe, but winked at 
when the eyes are eoYered with green 
paper bearing a cooiple of signatures 
and the portrait of some United States 
dignitary. Five minutes afterwards he 
was '*yes-«irring" me in the most cheer- 
ful manner possible, romping about the 
?ar TOstibule with the 2lhildifen, and 
keeping am eye on the teapot. 

I mentioned this peculiar psychical 
phenomeffion to the Capitalist. '*Sir," 
he S'aid, '^yoii did right. It's just goit 
to be done, and allowance made In the 
estimates. Many a man has lost a fat 
contract — I mean just been worried to 
death by standing on his rights and re- 
porting to the company. I tiled It once 



47 



A Canuck down South. 

with a porter. Not on this line. Demme, 
sir, he made my life miserable. A 
straight hold-up would have been more 
humane. Wheme^er 1 sat down to read, 
he would come along amid dust the seat, 
and tell me between whiles about the big 
tip he got from Vanderbilt last week, 'a 
pufekt gemmen, sah.' If I moved across 
the aisle he would gather up all the 
stray valises in the car and put them 
on my legs and into my ribs, explain- 
ing that they belonged to de gemma© 
dat holds dat seat. And every time I 
stood up, he'd produce his whisK to 
brush my coat, and stand there, just 
stand. If I went to the smoker, he 
would steal the matches and take away 
the cuspidors to clean them, opening 
the car door and filling the place with 
train dust and alkali. When I wanted 
to go to bed, he'd say cheerfully. 'Bed, 
saJh; yes, sah; make it up at de nex' 
station, sah,' and I'd have to roust him 
out of his own eventually In the 
morning he'd pull back the curtains 
about daybreak, wakeoi me up, and the© 
apologize. 'Tought you got out at de 



48 



Across the Prairie. 

las' atation, sah, beg paidon, sah ; de 
car*9 mighty imowded • some gemmen 
just got on lookin' foh a seat, sah. 
We's goin' trou* fine scenery, sah.' 
Why, if I hadn't tipped him at lasit, 1 
migM better havf walked." 

We had cast off our last dining oar at 
Kamstas City, and were thenceforth to 
depend upjon the dining stations along 
thie Doiute. If we exciept the occasional 
IrregTilarity of the meal hours, which 
sometimes compelled us to €<ait a second 
meal ere the first was well dtown, or 
•ombine two into one, I must eaay no- 
thimg that is mot in praise of the cater- 
ing. Twemty minutes dioes mot seem a 
looig time for a meal, and it is not, if 
one contemplates a state dinner ; but, 
from the time one sits down to the mo- 
ment one gets up at one of these dining 
stations, there is nothing left but to eat. 
There seem to be three waiters to each 
guest, amd tihe grass doesn't gnow un- 
der their feet. The first course is on the 
table as you sit diown; the next mysteri- 
ously slips under your nose as you take 
your lajst mouthful of the first, and so 



.1 Canuck down South. 

on, till you find yiourself at peace with 
tbe world, and ooiitentedly oiiewing a 
tioiothpick apparently hours before the 
train gives its preli^imary warning. To 
the most nervous and most fastidious I 
can only repeat, you will have plenty of 
time, and you can sciaroely dine bettesr. 

To invalids and those who have 
yiouug children 1 would say, by all 
means take a lun«h box. Our luinch box 
proved a thing of beauty and a joy for- 
ever. The Princess looked to that mat- 
ter herself, and being blessed with a fine 
appetite and a good digestion, to,ok 
pride in her labor. That box was our 
dearest friend on the journey. If time 
fell heavy upon cuir hands, we dived into 
that receptacle. If the children became 
troublesome, which even such paragons 
as ours siometimes did, we gave them 
the lunch box. If we did not feel like 
dining at the stations, we took care to 
teed the box iroan the lunoh counter. It 
was like the widow's cruise, inexhausti- 
ble, and the pleasures of Three Men in 
a Boat were fustian compared with ours 
in that box. From hiome we brought 



50 



Across the Prairie. 

tea, sug-ar, pepper, salt, knives, forJjs, 
spoons, cups and piatee, everything else 
we readily got on the way, Including 
dainty sections ol cold roast chickem. We 
had an alcohol lamp, and made tea, 
which was a Inxnir for the women. 

As to clothes, a man may wear his 
osTial costume, it it isn't a golf or a 
bicycle suit. A man riding to Calltornia 
In a bieyclo suit had best use his miu 
chine; otherwise he may furnish occupa- 
tion for a border town coroner. A wo- 
mam ? Well, j approach this subje«t 
with diffidence, having a constant ten- 
dency to confuse their articles of attire 
in a manner that the Princess says 
is scandalous. Perhaps I had better 
say that the Maiden Lady already men- 
tioned came on board m some kind of 
tight-fitting tailor-made dress, wltb 
starched collar, the envy of her sex, tho 
lodestone of ours, but before the jour- 
ney was over she was a spectacle for 
gods, not men. The starched collar waa 
always getting limp amd black, the 
dress buttons became gradually distribut- 
ed along the desert, amd her elbows and 



51 



A Canuck down South. 

forearms wore through her sleeves. I 
concluded theai, amd mow I Know, that 
loose clothing is the sine qua non, some- 
thi/ng in the blouse line I suppose. I 
would suggest a pretty wrapper, such 
as J saw on our trip, only that the 
Princess says 1 was altogethea* too at- 
tentive to that wrapper. 

It was this same maiden who brought 
a lot of ungainly valises into the car, 
amd roused our ire. If she; put them on 
her seat, they comstantly prodded her 
ribs; if she put them on the floor, we 
fell over them, and glared at her. At 
ndgiht they lay on her feet and kept her 
awake, at which we were savagely de- 
lighted. The rest of us had valises that 
would slip under the berth at night and 
stand deeently up in the corner next the 
window by day, miniature steamer 
trunks. These hints cost us something 
to learn, and are given without charge 
to those contemplating such a jouimey as 
ours. 

One last piece of advice: Remember 
Mark Twain's sad experiences with 
Webster's Unabridged and Stevenson's 



52 



Across the Prairie. 

troubles with Bancroft's History, aire! 
take no books yourself. You will be 
lucky if betweem the sig^luts to be seefa 
and tbe pleasiamt oonTersatioai of your 
companions you get time even to oon- 
Bult tlie guide-book you ought to buy 
on the cars. If 1, who live chiefly b'y 
and on boioks, say this, be sure it is so. 

In Kansas we were first made ac- 
quainted with the negro and the mule, 
a combination which supports half the 
comic papers of the Union; the man 
with a great flapping hat and the mule 
with two similar contrivances 'urnished 
by nature. Sometimes the negro would 
be asleep, and the mule's e«ars would fall 
forward over the anlmial's eyee and 
blind it, or get entangled with its feet 
and nearly send it sprawling, at which 
the negro would wakeai and tie the ears 
back again. There was a slight breeze 
blowing as we passed one such proces- 
sion, and the mule had great trouble 
tacking against it unt4l his master furl- 
ed his ears. 

'Now and again we had halted at 
80»ne city of the plains, vigorous, 



53 



A Canuck down SotitJi. 

and youthful, with broad avenues and 
frequent shade trees, and had then 
sped out over the rolling prairie, seeimg 
but few of the millions of cattle and but 
little of the cultivated ranches which 
make Kansas the secomd state of the 
Union in agricultural importance. Some 
of the towns have a reputation to sus- 
taifn, but the majority would prefer to 
lose theirs. They would evem exchange 
It for the reputation of a Montreal al- 
derman. 

Be it remembered that it was towards 
the close of October that we passed 
through Kansas; the crops were garner- 
ed, the plamted seed not yet quickened 
Into life. Eeturning towards the close 
of April following, we found the scene 
v^astiy different. The bare ground was 
now covered with tender green shoots, 
the whole state carpeted with velvet. It 
is one of the most striking features of 
the Journey to one accustomed to the 
well watered lands of Canada, to mark 
how, in the dry season, the maked earth 
lies a burned and heart-breaktag desert 
between the Miss/ourl and the Sierra, but 



54 



Across the Prairie. 

ready to blooim, crop upon crop, the 
whole year round, und^sr the favor of Ju- 
piter Pin Tins. Happy the land, how- 
ever, that has watercourses ! Was not 
Palestine such a country, *'a land which 
the Lord thy God careth for." The 
United States west is a land of Egypt, 
"where thou sowedst thj seed and water- 
edst it with thy foot, like a garden ol 
herbs," though the modern science ol 
trrigatlon has done much to ease the 
curse. Diogenes says they do not water 
by the foot out West, but by the "inch " 

A. Westemi rancher to whom I quoted 
these Scriptural passages replied that 
he had bieein told that there was a spe- 
culator named Joseph who was able to 
squeeze the shorts by getting a comer 
in Egyptian wheat when the Palestine 
crop ran out. It Is not safe to ai^ue 
out West, or I would have suggested 
that the Eigyptian crop was short that 
year al»o, and that Joseph had ooily 
cornered the supply. 

From the moment we had left Chi- 
oago, we had been climbing steadily 
skyward, and when we passed Coolldge, 



A Canuck (foicn South. 

the last station in Kansas, w« were 
3,365 feet above tide-water, Chicago b^ 
ing only 579 feet. We were to rise aa 
high again, and higher, ere from the 
suJimit of the Continenital Divide we 
could sweep down towards the Pacific. 
Hitherto, also, we had been speeding 
straight into the pathway of the seitting 
sun, but lat La Juinta, shortly after en- 
tering Colorado, we turned southward, 
leaving behind us the fametd health re- 
sorts and mining districts of the state, 
and seeiTig Pike's Peak dimly outlined 
northward in the azure distance. 

We cut off the oouth-easterm corner of 
Colorado, a land of virtual desert, of 
dry water courses, arid plains dotted 
with sage brush, and enlivened at in- 
frequent intervals only by the jack-rab- 
bit, whiose long ears obscured the vi- 
sion. Our train chased one of these 
creatures, or rather we thought it did, 
ontil he settled down to work, and them 
we knew he had only been siauntering 
before. Thetnei' was 'just one brown 
streak, amd we were alone again in the 
disconaolatte desierl:. 



56 



Across the Prairie. 

We were mot lomg in Colorado witih- 
out rumning into a moxintaiii. T'He state 
is not half the size of the PToviince of 
Quebec, horizontally, but if it had npt 
beem crumpled up s<o, it would probably 
cover the wbole of Camada. At least one 
getB this impTiessian friom glimpses of 
Pike's Peak and tihe two miajestia Span- 
ish Peaks that have been splittimg the 
horizom for some time, to say nothing 
of yonder w^all of rook through wihioh 
we are abo^ut to pass, treading in the 
footsteps of the Arsgomaiuts and of the 
aborigines who, centuries before Colum- 
bus, traversed the Raton Pass, one of 
the few highways through the Rockies. 






57 






CHAPTER in. 
Over thk Dividk. 

Mounta ins have ever been the holy 
places of the eartih. It was upon a 
mountain that Moses spoke with God, 
and troim a moointain that he brought 
down the commandments to those who 
on the plains below wee lost in super- 
stition and worshipped the golden calf. 
The world's two historic cities, Jerusa- 
lem and Rome, were built upon moum- 
talns, and the story of nations has 
shown time amd a^gain that the love of 
liberty and hooior amd great movementa 
have originiateid among those who were 
mountain bred. 

The influence of the plains is deprcBS- 
ing, their momioitoniy stagmatee the 



Over tlie Divide. 

mind, or involves it m mystical theo- 
ries. Witness tiie tbeologieis of Egyirt 
and the Populist movement in Kansas. 
The hills uplift to an approximiatiom of 
their own grandeur; the vultui*e for the 
plains, the eagle for the erags. Such, at 
any rate, is the sentiment of tihe tourist 
accustomed to a varied landscape who 
has had a diay and two nights upon the 
prairie, and sees before him for the first 
time, rise upon rise, tiue oi^tllers of the 
Rocky Mount ailns. 

We were mow well on along the Saimta 
Fe trail, every mile of whicn has had its 
tragedy, death by Apache bullet, delath 
by hunger, death by thirst, death by 
torture, amid, perhaps worst of all, 
death by heartbreak, when the sttout 
heart that had braved the weary miles 
from the Missouri gave out amd lay 
down to die before the heeidless barrieir 
that stood between him and the gold 
fields where he had hioped to win for- 
tune. The Arkansas River, alomg whose 
banks we had for some time been rum- 
ning, is now forsaken, and we shall 
see but little wiater for the remalnider of 



59 



A Canuck down South. 

our jourtaey, save an occasional moun- 
tain, stream. 

We were awakeaied for an earJy break- 
fast at La Junta, a little after six In 
the morniing. La Jmitia, the Junction, 
the name is sug-gestive of black-eyed sig- 
norettas, with cigarettes and jealous 
lovers, and,- unlike the bulk of United 
States names, it does not dlsaippoint us. 
Here a padre gets in, who has been re- 
cuperating at Goloradio Springs or look- 
ing at the mines at Detovesr. What 
strange tales he will tell his little Mexi- 
can mission floek! Will his peputation 
lor veracity stand the strain ? He has 
actually seen men workin^g, workln^g 
while they had niiomey in their pockets. 
Incredible ! And they did not celebrate 
a single saint's day. Monstrous! Theiy 
smoke pipes. Uaramba ! And drink 
strong waters. Ah, mow the padre speaks 
truth ; thiat is to be a man. 

Meanwhile our train has resigned its 
apparently interminiabie journey, and is 
hurling itself like a battering ram 
against the walls of rock that are draw- 
ing ever nearer. We have reached Trini- 



€0 



Goer the Divide. 

dad shortly before 11, "and now," says 
the Argonaut, "you ladies had better 
oome upon the reiar platform." The Vir- 
gin is tnere aircaay ; has sne not her 
guide-boiok to direct her ? We notice 
that the Argooiiaut avoids her. and £itt- 
taches himself to the Princess. The 
Lieutenant's wife looks carefully after 
her personal property, but the Virgin is 
serene. She has her guide-book. 

Liike the breath of the sialt sea was 
the first breath of the hills. Trinidald 
ts at their foot, and here a seciomd pow- 
erful engine was attached. Shades of 
early scoffers who thought no train 
could progress on smooth rails, what d)o 
ye think of this ? We were going to be 
hoisted 1,640 feet into the sky within 
the next twenty miles, and would boldly 
go through a mountain that barred our 
further progress. Two engines to draw 
us, and yet he who would might have 
walked alongside the train, whose speed 
did not exceed four miles an hour. We 
wound round spurs, and rose upon tres- 
tle-work and curves yard by yard, fthe 
engines panting ajnd the wheels ac- 



A Canuck down South. 

tiialliy screamliig on tlie rails a* the 
train turned and twisted snakily in aaid 
out among tlie hills, revealing to our de- 
lighted eyes wondrous vistas, canons 
and ridges. At times we clung oniracu- 
lously to the face of a cliH, stole oai 
filmy bridges over ravines shaded wttb 
tremulous aspeais, slipped by long, 
straight slopes, rugged with pines, aoid 
anon paused, as though, at last, the en- 
ergy of man and the power of steam to- 
gether lespaired of surmounting the 
rise upon -*ise of interminable rock that 
overhung us. But man again proved 
his invincibility, and still we climbed 
the firemen feeding the insattiable fires, 
up, ever up, throug^h the azure, such 
azure and dreamful sunlight as beggars 
description, until in the weirdest plaoe 
of all, when the masses of rock seemed 
closing in upon us frum all sides, we 
plunged iinto the Eaton Tunnel with so 
mighty a re-echoing roar and rumble 
that all Inferno seemeid about to wel- 
come us to its Walpurgis dance. 

'•Uncle Dick','' it was the Argonaut 
who was speaking, amd his words were 



Ovei' the Divide. 

addressed to the PrtQcess. "Uncle Dick 
lived there," point ing to a ruined shianlgr 
on tlie rigiit of the traxjk as we had ap- 
proached the tunjiel. "And if ever man 
was glad to see his fellow-mam It was 
OS the night we pulled up here. He 
wasn't tcnuch on religion, bun it seems 
to me that that man was another St. 
Christopher or some kind of Broad 
Church missionary just set down there 
by God himself to do something to help 
along a crowd of half-dead, gold-himt- 
tng, profane, blackguardly fellows like 
as, and put some heart into us and 
some faith in mam after our fights with 
the redskin devils all along the line. 
Dick W:Ooten kept this pass ia order tor 
the forty-niners, and if every man that 
owed him anything for that was to sub- 
crlbe two bits for a monument, it would 
scrape the stars out of the sky as the 
world turned round,'' 

The Capitalist siaid: "I reckon he 
made a good thing out of ithe pass, if 
he charged toll." 

The Virgin chirped blithely : **0h, 
yes, he did ; it says so in the guide- 
book." 



A Canuck down South. 

Thje Arg-onaut said again, and Ms tome 
checked the two like a cold water 
douche ; **I reckon he made consideip- 
able out of it, if the angels know their 
busimess. He's dead, and T hope I'll be 
good emougih tto meet him again." 

We had entei-ed New Mexico an instant 
before plumging Into the Raton Tunnel, 
and were then 7,662 feet above the sea. 
The tummel is 2,011 feet long, replacing 
an old switch-back track that winds 
like a eorkscnew over the mountain, amid 
once through it our descent began, fast 
and faster, the brakes on, the engines 
reversed, and the smoke from the burn- 
ing grease arouaid the hot wheels of- 
fending our nostrils while we slid down 
the mouaitain slopes into a valley thia/t 
was but the prelude to another scram- 
ble towards the stars. 

A little more than a quarter of a mile 
nearer the earth's ceoitre than Raton, we 
stopped at lL.as Vegas, an important 
town and health resort, an<d theoi we 
began mountalneerimg again. From the 
rear platform of the Pullman scetoe fol- 
lowed scene until, near evening, we had 



64 



Over the Diride. 

tealtliily rigen to an altitude of 7,452 ft. 
at Glorieta Pass. Glorieta oaeaois bower 
or summer house, but the hame does iiiot 
sound so sweietly in the ears of a con- 
sumptive. That place is his Rubicon, 
oftem his Waterloo. The high altitude 
at which the traiin travel's for a diay and 
a night is injurious to hemorrhagic pa- 
tieintB, or those with heai-t com plica- 
tions, thoug*h it may be mentiooaed that 
the Santa Fe is about the safest trans- 
oontinantal route in this respect. Sleep 
fors'akes the pillow, ajnd, as the hlours 
go by, with cruel slowness, the shorten- 
ing b,rea,tti, twitching hands and distress- 
ing cough make the officials watchful. 
Then domes the hemoii'h'aige, sometimes 
only a relief, but sometimes ushering is 
the last sceme of all, — and the yellow 
flag or yellow lantern announces that 
another mortal has put on immortality. 
Several of us felt the oppression of the 
rarlfied air, and lost the night's sleep. 

We pasisied Albuquerque after sunset, 
and took om two dandified personiages 
from New York, with hig'h collars, fash- 
ionable beiavers amd frock soats, w^ho 



A. Canuck down South. 

continually sucked the gold knoba of 
their walking sticks, as though toto re- 
cently from the nursery to have forgot- 
ten the habits of babyhood. The Argo- 
naut looked at them as they entered the 
smoking room, got up, saldi Ireezlngly 
that he feared his smoking might annoy 
them, and went out upon the platform. 

"Well," he said, as I joined him there, 
"you wanted to know what changes 
have taken place out west since forty- 
nine Go back to the smoking car, 
and look at them. They would have 
been planted at Kansas City in my time. 
They would have scared the stage mules 
half to death. Did you niotice ihow I 
bolted?" 

The Argonaut had not meant this re- 
flection upon himself, and J was too 
wise to notice it. 

New Mexico is almost the only portion 
of the United States whioh can rival 
Canada in ancient history, and, like 
portions of the Province of Quebec, is 
the only part of the country where an- 
elent manners and customs and institu- 
tlo<ns persist sidfe by side with modem 



Over the Divide. 

twogrees Separated by nearljr -- 
thousand miles, tbese two conservative 
regions afford many similarities. In Que- 
bec, the cross is in evidence at intersect- 
ing roads, on hills, and in the villages ; 
it is so also in New Mexico. The Mexi- 
can oven is the habitant oven. Quebec 
suffered from seigniorial tenure ; New- 
Mexico suffered from the old Spanish 
lamd grant Bysteiai. The Mexican chim- 
ney eorner is a place whers Jean Bap- 
tiste could sit and smoke and dream 
himself at home. Only Jean Baptisite 
would turn his m)se up at the cigarette, 
and Ju.'an Bautista would sneeze over 
the black pipe and kittikanik. Further- 
more, neither will use his fists. The 
Canadian habitant will fight by the 
hour with his enemy, hulling worda 
across the street, and getting his friends^ 
to hold him so that he may do his to© 
no bodily harm, while the Mexican will 
smile under an insult if he does not 
think it safe to resent it at once, and 
your friends will find you with a stilet- 
to in your back a week later. Jean 
Baptiste will work ; Juan Bautista will 



67 



A Canuck down South. 

not work. Jean Baptist© hides hts 
hoard in a stocking ; Juan Bautista 
hides his wealth in the ground against 
a rainy day, and that never oomes 
In New Mexico. The Capitalist 
says that thonsiantds of square 
miles of territory throug'hout the South 
are houey-comhed with deposits of trea- 
sure, which the Mexican is too supersti- 
tious to endeavor to unearth, but which 
he thinks would yield a dividend on the 
stock of his projected Mexican Buried 
Treasure Company, to w tiidh he want- 
ed me to suhscrihe. 

The Mexican takes pride In his horse 
and saddle, and every Canadian knowa 
that Jean Blaptiste may be slow in many 
things, but that he must have a fast 
horse to speed on the ice in winter or 
down the country road after mass, his 
best girl by his side. Neither Mexican 
nor habitant cares much for modenn 
mprovements ; the Mexican still ploughs 
with a sharpeaied stick. There is no- 
thing in the Eoman creed itself that 
should cause men to stagnate, but it is 
an undeniable fact that a iarge Roman 



68 



Ocer the Divide. 

Cat}»oJic commimity is giemeirally behind 
oiie whioh Is Protestant. Is it that men 
who bow their wills in all things to ooie 
man, be he priest or ruler under an^y 
other name can-not hope tio compete 
with men who have it Heir wits sharpen- 
ed by self--TeliaTice ? Is it that the un- 
numbered fete days and hiolldays ener- 
vate them for business, as mem who 
dine by candle-light and sip liqueurs and 
wear gloves, go dlow^n before the brawtiiy 
fisted noonday diners, lill, but loir the 
inflow of farmers' sons from +he coaim- 
try, great cities would deteriorate ? 
Whatever be the reason, ft is Inidasr-'ut- 
able that a priest-ridden people mujst 
rest aomtenit witii the kingdom of hea- 
ven, for they will get but little of the 
good things of eaTth. 

And yet they get hiappiniess. There is 
no denying the fact. The Mexican is 
born, marries and dies in oonstant snin- 
light; he has no newep^aper, mo adver- 
tising, no btisitness apparently ; no 
booms, no speculative fever (unless gam- 
bling means the s^ame); has probably 
never hveard of the President ^ aiid would 



69 



A Canuck down South. 

show iko intetrest in an election that seta 
every so-called cleveor man In the States 
freDzied with excitement. He never 
make himself a clothes-horse for election 
badges before the day, nor trundles his 
neighbor round town in a b'arrow, or 
shaves the ome side of his face the day 
after ; yet he is far more contented tlian 
they. 

We were now truly in a foreign land. 
The United States owns it, but the 
once masterly Spamiajrd has left the im- 
press of his mailed hand upon It, And 
a still more ancient civilization piques 
the curiosity of the antiquary in the 
pueblos, grouped on the top of some al- 
most inaccessable rook or mesa, and 
reached by sheer climbing of Ladders or 
niches in the rock. What terrible Inva- 
siom in prehistoric times drove this an- 
cient people to sudh defensive meas- 
uers ? Vamdals and Huns have roamed 
on every continent, and the Israelitish 
wanderings and conquent of the indwel- 
ler have been exemplified even on these 
Western plains at the very dawn of the 
hnm^LD era. 



70 



Over the Divide. 

We passed In the night, but saw on oiur 
return one eur*h Pueblo, Laguna, perch- 
ed upon a barren hill some sixty odti 
miles from Albuquerque, apparently one 
house of adobe mud, flat-roofed and ca- 
pable of accommodating faliy a thou- 
sand people. In older days entry was 
effected by climbing ladders to the roof, 
and diescending through the scuttle, 
after drawing the ladder up. The Capi- 
talist says that a latch key must have 
been a very cumbrous article in those 
times, and that to have seen a party of 
hilarious Pueblos staggering home In 
the wee sma' 'ours, and trying to ex- 
tract their ladders from their vest pock- 
eits and lean them up against the right 
house must have been a curious sight. 
There is a legend mot set down in the 
guide-books, that the PuebDo women 
used to sit upon the house-tops while 
their better halves were at the lodge, 
and would not let the ladder down to 
them unless they could pronounce Cua- 
uhquichollam, Tequechmecaniani and 
Tlacahuepancuexotzin, whiOh, one would 
Judge, was a more severe ordeal thain 
chry sasnt hem um . 



71 



A Canuck dotcii Houth. 

The Mexican houses are flat-roiofed, 
on^-storied affairs, not U'lilik^ large 
match-boxes, mad« of mu'd', which the 
everlasting STiotilight bakes a ligbt yel- 
low. This material is called adobe in 
the guide-books, aaad doby by Western- 
ers, and m that rainliess climate is prac- 
tically indestructible. The old Pecos 
ohlirch, visible in the valley shoo-tly af- 
ter passing Gloriefta, is some 350 years 
old, and its doby walls are as good as 
■new. On the top of the hauaited mesa, 
the oibsea-ver imagines that he can still 
see the remains of the Acoma which was 
before the pnessent Acoma, and the pre- 
sent Acoma claims to have had a few 
years the start of the Tower of Barbel. 
The legiend of the first town is a sad 
one, with which the guide-books make 
us familiar. It appears that a lar^ 
landslide or a cloaidburst, or somefthing 
of the kind, took place while the meai 
were working on their farms Im the 
plains below, and their mewms of getting 
back to town was destroyed. Some say 
all the women, some saiy only three, 
were in the town when t<he catastrophe 



72 



Over the Divide. 

took pDace ; but, however the iniimber 
varies, the leigjetnids all agree tihat the 
mctti on the plains had th© agonized fate 
of I'ookiaiig vainly up the face of seven 
humdred feet of eliff. to where fra.ntic 
womeii slowly sftacrved to deiatfh. And 
fr,om that diay, sio mew here back in the 
agies, to this, the foot of majn has neA^er 
walked in these deserted chajiibers or 
hum^oi etye loofceid o-ver the wall where 
the dreiadful tragedy was enacted. It 
is a strange thing to think of, a Pom- 
peii in the sky, awaiting the comi/ng 
of i'sjome iiimeteenth century investigator, 
wliio shiall find, perhaps the children's 
toys unt.oucJied upon tJie floors, the wo- 
mem's domestic implements, the evi- 
demcee on the long-deserted hearth of 
thie meial that was joyfully betoiig pre- 
pared for HoA'efd ones, «nd perhaps evetn 
the Irodies of the dead, for In that at- 
miosphere even flesh dries, a>n\d scarcely 
will decay. Superstition has surround- 
ed that lone rock an the Mexicjan plains, 
and he who would solve the mystery 
will require armed mem at his back. 
Will it be worth the while, or will thje 



73 



A Canuck dotcn South. 

result of any investigatioji be bnt an- 
other useless desecratlooi that shall 
cause us once more to bless the natu- 
ral law which decrees that even our 
banes should vanish ere the time ar- 
rives wheal we are strangers to the 
earth where once we were familiar, aod 
serve to gratify the curiosity of some 
hum am mole. 

From Glorieta to AiDuquerq^ue the air- 
brakes were scarcely ever off. We were 
virtually tobogganing down mountain 
slopes, and within less than a hundred 
miles had subsided to an elevation 2,500 
feet lower than at Glorieta. We crossed 
the Rio Grande in the gloom of night, 
which rendered that stream more roman- 
tically picturesque than was the Missouri 
under the sunlijj^ht, which had revealed 
the mud-flats diversified by a creek, the 
enormous bridge over which iooked like a 
piece of sarcasm. But the greater ease 
in breathing which the lower level gave 
us was not destined to last long, for from 
Albuquerque we were again toiling up 
grade towards the Continentnl Divide, 
that mystic point whence a glass of wa- 



74 



Over the Divide. 

tep spilled east or west ml^tit seek the sea 
of peace or that of storms, the grand old 
ocean that for centuries has crowned Bri- 
tish brows with triumph, or the vast 
new waters destined to roar through co- 
ral reefs or whisper on golden sands the 
story of a dawning age. 

Crossing the Divide ? The term Itn olden 
times was synonymous with death. It 
was used in this sense by the Argonauts, 
possibly because their aeaven was on the 
other or eastern side, probably because 
they could think of no fate more dread- 
ful than returning from their vast hori- 
zons and high, bracing, soul-stirring lati- 
tudes to a life on a lower level among 
starched shirts and the fetters of cus- 
tom and fashion forged about mankind 
by a dea.d and gone generation, a place 
where men are measured by their stone 
frontages and their great grandlathers, and 
no longer by their own human inches and 
mental image of their Creator, it was 
about three in the morning when we pass- 
ed this "line," and most of us, notwltti- 
standing our interest, were sleeping, 
though restlessly. 



75 



A Canuck dozen South. 

It may have been tne effect of the alti- 
tude, or it may have been something else, 
but I know I dreamt a wonderful dream. 
The romance of the Maiden Lady came 
home at last. It was hroad daylight, 
and we men were, as usual, sitting m the 
emoker spinning yarns. The dandies who 
had got on at Albuquerque were with us, 
each sitting oai his hands and enjoying 
the conversation. Suddenly the train jar- 
red, and slowly came to a stop. The Ar- 
gonaut leaned forward, a strange fixed 
look on his face that was not agreeable, 
and his hand stole round towards his 
back, while he looked penetratingly into 
all our faces in rapid succession. 

"What is that?" said one of the tender- 
feet. "Is it a hohl-up?" 

I don't know why, but we all followed 
the look of the Argonaut, which was 
fixed on the New York dudes, and each 
of these harmless creatures now held a re- 
volver in eaci) hand, and each revolver 
looked like a cannon. 

Then one of the dudes said suavely: "It 
Is a hold-up. I am sorry to interrupt the 
tory, but can assure you, gentlemen, that 



76 



Ot^er the Divide. 

if you will only keep your hands above 
your heads for a little while, we will do 
you no harm. There's fifty thousand in 
the express to-day, and our pals want 
it. We don't intend you any harm if you 
nave horse sense." 

There were shots towards the front of 
he train, then screams, screams of a man, 
not reassuring if you have ever heard 
them ; yet the dudes sat immovable with 
their howitzers, that now looked like 
hundred ton guns, pointing everywhere at 
once, as it seemed. I was there but I 
must have had a nightmare, for 1 couldn't 
raise my hands, and my pistol in my hip- 
pocket seemed to be about a thousand 
miies away. 
Then came the denouement. The Maiden 
Lady entered, clad? — well, they »ay 
dreams are made, as a mosaic, out of 
waking experiences; but if I ever saw a 
woman so dressed I want to know it. 
She wore pajamas and carried a parasol 
and said tragically : 

"This is a hold-up.'- 

The mouths of the revolvers had mean- 
while expanded to about the size of the 



W 



A Canuck down South. 

Baton Tunnel; yet on the lett side of one 
I saw the robber wiuce. The Maiden 
Lady looked at him, and then there was 
a shriek. I said to myself ; 

• Now, we'll get a tirst-class corpse." 

Instead of which she threw herself upon 
the immaculate shirt front," 

"Found, found !" she cried; "my long 
lost brother." 

And then, as I woke, 1 still heard the 
long lost brother say "damn." 

But the last part wasn't a dream, 1 
heard the word over and over again, as a 
night-shirted young husband who had got 
on — well, I win not say where — paraded 
the car with his squalling child. He did 
not stay In one place, but with generous 
Instincts distributed that squall ail ovtr 
the car. Now he would hold the baby 
to the keyhole of the Lieutenant's state- 
room, and when he heard the Lieutenant's 
remark, would bolt impetuously to the 
other end of the car, distributing a war- 
whoop at every berth. By and bye our 
youngest woke, stretched himseL, put his 
to© In my mouth, and said : 

•*Pa, is that a new baby?" 



J8 



Over the Divide. 

1 said 1 didn't know. 

"Well, pa, if that's a new baby, dion't 
you think the angels put him out of he»- 
yen because he cries so?" 

Again 1 didn't know. 

"Pa, don't you think it needs olllngV" 

1 said 1 didn't think it could do much 
better than it was doing. 

Morning dawned at last after an un- 
comfortable night, ushering in our fifth 
day on the cars. I do not know how 
others feel about it, but we felt after the 
first day as if a change to a cofBn would 
be a welcome relief, and give us more 
room. On the second day we were willing 
to stand another twenty-tour liours ; on 
the third day, we didn't care how long 
the journey lasted, and on the fifth we 
thought of its termmation with regret. 
There is no doubt that eels do get used 
to skinning. 

We had fallen so thoroughly into one 
another's ways, made such delightful 
friendships, and had, on the whole, so 
much comfort on the long journey, that 
we would indeed have been very hard to 
please had we not begun to regret the 



A Canuck doivn ^outh. 

now fast approacMug- hour of separation. 
The warmth of a trans- Atlantic acquain- 
tance is but cold and distant compared 
with riiat which is engendered by such a 
trip as ours. Compared with a Pullman 
car, a steamer is a wilderness. On board 
ship we can get away into nooks and 
corners ; in a Pullman, even a flirtation 
must he carried on under the eyes ot old 
campaigners, and no one can get out of 
reach of his neighbor's ears and eyes. We 
ate together, talked together, almost 
dressed together, and slept so closely 
packed that one felt that his neighbor 
read his very dreams. A filmy curtain 
was our house front, and across the 
street our fellow-citizen fared no better. 
In our long journey from Chicago we had 
nil become accustomed to much that 
would have appeared odd in a drawing- 
room, which reminds me of a ludicrous 
Incident, which was, however, anything 
but funny to the chief actors. 

Some time during the night, at some 
way-station, a man and his wife got on, 
and we were immediately prejudiced 
against them, because the man had wak- 



80 



Over the Divide. 

ened us with liis storming at tiae con- 
ductor for not having a lower bertli to 
give them, as though the Company should 
have kept a berth empty for their conveni- 
ence all the way from Chicago. In the 
morning, while we were in the midst of our 
dressing in our usual free and easy style, 
the Argonaut, sweeping under his hertb 
for his collar-button, and the Capitalist 
making down the aisle towards the wash- 
room, with the bulk of his clothing over 
his arm, a flash of a neat ankle or bare 
arm, fringed somewhere around the 
shoulder with dainty lace showing 
from behind the berth curtains the 
kind of struggle the ladies were 
having to dress ; when, I say, we 
were thus engaged, this new comer, whom 
we regarded as an interloper among our 
party, returned from the wash-room, 
where he had dressed himself. He took 
the situation in at a glance. His wife, 
who had been sitting in her seat, complet- 
ing her toilet, was, in his opinion, in im- 
minent danger, and he pounced upon the 
mildest-mannered and most modest of 
our party, an English Church clergyman, 



A Canuck down South. 

who stood without coat or vest, giving 
the finishing touches to the halyards that 
upheld his lower rigging, his standing 
rigging, as it were. 

'Sir," screamed the irate and shocked 
husband ; "what do jou mean by such 
conduct. How dare you, sir, unblushing- 
ly, dress in my wife's presence?" 

If a thunderbolt had fallen amongst us 
It would not have created more consterna- 
tion. The Argonaut stopped peering un- 
der the berth ; the Capitalist quickened hig 
pace and disappeared into the smoking- 
room, while there was a sudden stoppage 
of the rustling behind the curtains, as 
though the ladies had imagined it was to 
them that loud-voiced Comstock address- 
ed himself. 

Our, shy clergyman had no idea that 
he was being spoken to in that manner, 
and proceeded quietly to put on his vest, 
when a renewed roar in his ear lifted him 
from the car floor, and when he landed 
again he turned round and asked in 
ome confusion, "Are you speaking to 
ne?" 

" To you, sir, yes, sir ; it's perfectly 



Over the Divide. 

scandalous, sir ! Porter, do you not see 
hat creature putting on his vest, his vest, 
sir, before my wife's eyes." 

But the porter was out on the back 
platform, admiring the scenery by that 
time. 

The poor clergyman so suddenly as- 
gaulted, lost his presence of mind for the 
moment, or I'm sure he would not have 
replied as he did. It was a good retort, 
but too good to be intended. He said : 

" I beg your pardon ; I — I, I really 
didn't think she would object. I'm sure 
I didn't when I saw her putting on her—" 

"Sir, don't talk to me ; don't dare, sir. 
You ought to be ashamed of your cloth," 
the long coat being very much in evidence 
on the car seat, and the clerical vest hav^ 
mg been buttoned all awry in great 
haste. 

Then the clergyman recovered his senses. 
He had not dealt with sinners for no- 
thing, and this boor was very much in 
his line. 

•'My dear sir," he said, frigialy ; "if 
you cannot be gentlemanly, you should 
at least be consistent, 1 do not consider 



A Canuck down South. 

that a man without his vest is so disre- 
putable an object as to call forth such 
remarks, and, at any rate, It Is preposte- 
rous that you should cry out upon me at 
one moment to be ashamed of ray cloth, 
when you have just told me I should be 
ashamed of the want of it." 

Then followed language that I dare not 
set down, and it was not the clergyman 
who used it, either. But, fortunately, it 
did not last long. With one bound the 
Argonaut laid his still powerful arm on 
that of the boor (we weren't shocked at 
the lack of the collar-button just then), 
and he said : 

"You miserable hound, if you don't re- 
cognise that there are ladies on this car, 
and stop that profanity, I'll throw you 
from the car window. You never were 
on a Pullman before, nor mixed with de- 
cent people." And the way that man 
Rnbsided and took his meek wife off the 
car at the next station is one of the plea- 
sant memories of my life, f hough I, and 
all of us, were deeply sorry for his wife. 

When the morning sun gilded the peaks 
about us we were in Arizona. If New 



S4 



Over the Divide. 

Mexico affords us a glimpse of prebistorio 
civilization and peoples, surely Arizona re- 
veals to us the secrets of the creation of 
the world. Here we seem to be in Na- 
ture's boiler-room, and her stupendous en- 
ergy, which in other parts of the world 
is concealed under vales smiling with 
flowers and flowing rivers, is here demon- 
strated in rivers of congealed lava and 
ashes and cinders, Iheaped up mountain 
high. Among yonder peaks lies cold and 
still the crater of many a volcano which 
once perhaps rivalled Krakatoa, Etna 
and Vesuvius. In the dawning ages,when 
the continent bore a different shape, and 
strange monsters lurked in the sea and 
stranger trod the earth, what a dreadful 
scene must Arizona have presented, the 
solid world trembling with pent-up va- 
poi-s, the lava winding luridly down the 
vast mountain slopes, the air thick with 
steam and cinders and sick with the con- 
tinuous thunder of mighty explosions I 
For miles upon miles, upon all sides, as 
the train swept on, we saw nothing but 
the relics of subterranean fli-es. And then, 
as the hours slipped by, and once more 



85 



A Canuclc doicn South. 

we were on the flanks of the mountains, 
my heart went out to Arizona. We seem- 
ed once more in Canada. Here were 
whispering pines, long woodland aisles 
where the sunlight steeped verdant Ivnoll 
and rocky crag with color and with 
warmth. Here were flowers, water- 
courses and life, and the axe of the lum- 
berman rang keen as in our woods at 
home. Yes, I love Arizona. Even in its 
deserts it has a charm such as endears 
Sahara to the Arab, and its bare hills 
have the strange, weird attraction such 
as Rob Wanlock sings of in his Scottish 
Hits. A.rizona, like a capricious beauty, 
wins and holds us, in spite of will or rea- 
BOD. Whether it be the unique Devil's 
Canon, which the train leaps over, cling- 
ing to a filmy bridge 225 feet above the 
tiny stream beneath, or the incomparable 
Grand Canon of the Colorado, which is 
over 6,000 feet deep, or the 13,000 feet 
of the San Francisco mountain, half of 
which, even at the elevation we have 
reached, still towers above us; whether it 
be the chalcedony park, or the cave dwell- 
ings, or only the natural mountain parks, 



Over the Divide. 

the ruddy desert and cinder cones and the 
'valuable copper mines of the country, Ari- 
zona is a fitting gateway to California, 
the land oi sunshine and treasure. 

I shall not soon forget Canon Diabolo. 
The Capitalist and I were standing on the 
rear platform, when suddenly the level 
prairie sank away swiftly from us to a 
deptb that madJe us dizzy to look down, 
as though the subterranean powers had 
cleft the earth to claim their own. We 
had lust time to gasp when the earth rose 
again to meet us, and the train was once 
more gliding along the level. There had 
not been the slightest warning of what 
was coming. At night a man would 
walk clear off the prairie, and apparently 
put his lifted foot down in tne streets of 
Hong Kong. Tbe Capitalist mopped his 
brow. 

"I always forget that canon," he said ; 
•*and my heart jumps into my mouth 
when we leave the ground ao unexpected- 
ly. I'm not as good now as the first 
time I was bald-headed, and that gulf 
scares me. What chances they lose out 
West I If I had that canon in New York 



87 



A Canuck doicn tiouth. 

State, now, I could make a fortune out 
of it. Just picture it, a big hotel on each 
side, incline railway to the bottom, roller 
skating rink, rope-walkers going across, 
peanuts, banana stands, merry-go-rounds 
for the children, and so on. Sir, there'd 
be a fortune in that canon ; and I'd ad- 
vertise it till there wouldn't be a man 
would dare come to America and not 
see it." 

We supped in California that Wednesday 
evening, at the Needles, and mirthful was 

ur last night on the train. What a won- 
derful creature is man ! While we, in the 
luxury of a Pullman car s,at smoking and 
spinning yarns over our ice-cold liquors, 
we were boring through the gloom of 
night over the great American Desert, 
where many an unfortunate forty-niner 
left his bones to bleach under the pitiless 
sun of a parched sea of sand and giant 
cactus. Here there was a sign of life only 
at the little stations set down along the 
line of steel, — one called Bagdad, a name 
which fitted it , another called Siberia. 
Whose grim irony named this hottest spot 
m the world after that region of ice ? I 



Over the Divide. 

stood a short time on the platform that 
night, watching the placid stars and the 
dim stretches of mesa, broken by cactus 
shadows, and wondering at the energy of 
those who in a prairie schooner traversed 
the Western wilds, wound through the 
mountain passes, and crossed these two 
hundred miles of deadly alkali plains in 
pursuit of gold. Starvation Peak, Los 
Animas, the river of lost souls, Death 
alley, and hundreds of places, named and 
imnamed, witnessed the stern fight 
waged between barbarism and civiliza- 
tion and between man and nature, ere 
the Stars and Stripes waved in Pacific 
breezes. 

The journey across the continent, is it 
not an allegory of the journey of life ? 
Such thought, as the car wheels clanked 
rythmetically on the rails, shaped itself 
in my mind as follows : 

LIFE'S AEGONADTS. 

Over the Red Missouri, 

Out on the open plain, 
Far from the hatmts of childhood, 

They ne^er shall see again, 



A Canuck down South. 

Seeking the golden treasure, 

Braving the toil and strife, 
Eagerly go the Argonauts 

On the journey of life. 

Vast and void and voiceless 

To the horizon's rim, 
Stretches the rolling prairie, 

As day by day grows dim. 
Beneaith the vrondrous star glow 

That lights the heavens calm, 
Come bivouac, rest and slumber 

And dreams of the lone first palm. 



Nor tree, nor gras6, nor blossom, 

Anywhere under the eye, 
Sage brush, sand and cactus 

And glistening alkali; 
Promise of water often, 

But only a mirage sham. 
Till lips can hardly utter 

A sigh for the lone first palm. 

The prairie dog has his burrow. 

The prairie hen her nest; 
Only we, under heaven, 

Have neither home nor rest. 



Over tJie Divide. 

Over the shimmering level, 

Long as the hot sun ewam. 
We plodded wearily forward. 

Seeking the lone first palm. 

Beyond the rolling prairie. 

Beyond the desert drear. 
At last, the rugged mountains 

Their mighty flanks uprear. 
Parched and starved and weary. 

We face their pitiless calm — 
Oh, that the journey were over, 

Oh, for the lone first palm I 

Indian braves in their ambush. 

Hark! how th'i bullets sing! 
While, through unfathomed canons, 

Shrilly the war whoops ring! 
Lying, face up to the heavens. 

Silent are Dick and Sam, 
God in His mercy bring the rest 

Safe to the lone first palm! 

Miles upon miles of desert 

Under a burning sun. 
Till the blood is boiling in our veins. 

And life is almost done ; 
Then rise upon rise of mountains, 

And hope's eternal balm. 
In the vales beyond is the goal we seek. 

Hurrah! for -(he lone first palm. 



A Canuck doicn South. 

Precipice, cliff and canon, 

Torrent and icy peak, 
Tempest, and whirling snow drifts 

Hiding the trail we seek. 
Then sunshine, warmth and pleasure. 

And rest without pain or qualm 
In a riotous garden of flowers 

Beneath the lone first palm. 

Prairie and peak and desert, 

Hope, and the death of hope, 
Joys and alluring visions, 

Trials and the strength to cope ; 
Success to him who struggles, 

Defeat to him who faints, 
So strives each soul to reach its goal, 

The Haven of the saints. 

Next morning palm trees and graceful 
peppers, eucalyptus, poplar and other fa- 
miliar and unfamiliar trees, greeted our 
eyes. The desert had given place to a 
garden, and through orange and lemon 
groves, vineyards, apricot, prune and fig 
orchards, and a riot of roses and other 
flowers, we reached our destination. 



92 






CHAPTER IV. 
In Arcadia. 

When we reached Sierra Madre, after 
60 long a railway journey that the time- 
table had come to be regarded as a piece 
of sarcasm, Diogenes met us at the sta- 
tion. Diogenes is a Canadian, and that 
is not his name, but as he sets up to be 
a philosopher and came to meet us with 
a lantern that glorious sunny morning — 
a tribute to my honesty — he was so 
dubbed instanter, and the name has 
stuck to him. A short drive through 
avenues shaded with pepper-trees, euca- 
lypti, palms and live oaks, brought us 
to the cottage that was to be our Cali- 
fornia home, a sweet little place sun- 
smitten all day long, its verandah 
gloomed with morning-glories and climb- 



A. Canuck down South. 

ing roses and its carriage drive lined with 
broad-leaved palmettos drawn up sol- 
dierly o-n either side, as though to keep 
in cheek the mob of orange and lemon 
trees that crov/ded the ranch. Here 
in the golden afternoon was gathered a 
party of reunited Canadians, and while 
the children romped in the garden, pelt- 
ing one another with roses and carna- 
tions or playing hide-and-seek behind 
banks of chrysanthemums, Diogenes and 
I talked of the long ago, and offered 
such incense of tobacco (brought from 
Canada) to the Manitou as would have 
made Barrie write a second volume in 
hoDor of 'My Lady Nicotine,' and have 
shamed the tribute of the Algonquins 
who guided Champlain beyond the Chau- 
diere Falls. 

After that October day we hunted 
health and killed time in Arcadia. Phyl- 
lis was not there, nor Strephon, except 
under less euphonious names and in more 
unromantic guise, nor did we ever spy 
a woodland nymph or hear the hoof of 



94 



In Arcadia. 

a satjrr among the live oaks' gospelling 
glooms. Otherwise, it was Arcadia. 
The sun sauntered lazily through the 
sky, day after day, and let the seasons 
take care of themselves. The century- 
plant thought itself very energetic be- 
cause it had bloomed cnce since the De- 
claration of Independence, while the 
flowers forgot time altogether, and blos- 
somed the whole year round. There a 
thousand years were as a day, and a day 
as a thousand years. The inhabitants 
seldom knew the month and hardly ever 
the date. Calendars are handy when 
promissory notes have to be renewed. 
Diogenes had one, and so had I, but we 
were never able to induce any banker to 
allow us to put them to their proper 
use, and the only interest we had in 
keeping track of the date was connected 
with our remittances. No one could 
keep track of the days of the week in 
this Arcadia, and Diogenes, who has a 
deep reverence for the fourth command- 
ment, made it a rule not to work at all. 



95 



A Canuck down South. 

lest he should inadvertently break the 
Sabbath. 

Phj'sieians the world over send con- 
sumptives to southern California, but 
they never seem to get there. At least, 
there are none in Sierra Madre, although 
a good deal is heard about lung trouble. 
oSTo invalid dies there ; he does not even 
slip awa, like Drumtochty folk. His 
friends only say that he is gone, and 
shake their heads, fearing that, having 
gone farther, he may be faring worse. 
In the various sanitoriums time is plea- 
santly spent swapping symptoms, and 
the man who has most is looked upon 
with exceeding respect. Diogenes and 
I secured a fairly good reputation in this 
direction by the liberal use of a medical 
dictionary. It is truly wonderful how 
many symptoms can be got from an un- 
abridged medical dictionary, assisted 
by a vivid imagination. There was, 
however, one man in the place before 
whom we sank into irritating insignifi- 
cance. He had more diseases tlhan a 



hi Arcadia. 

civic hospital, and had a way of diagnos- 
ing some fatal and insidious malady from 
what his companions had mistaken for 
signs of robust health. If he slept well, 
paresis was coming on ; if he slept ill, 
his days were numbered ; if he had a 
good appetite, there was a secret waste; 
if he ate but little, he was in the last 
stages of something awful. Diogenes 
and T could not boast of a single symp- 
tom in his presence without being 
swamped with a list of his maladies. He 
was dying more variously than any par- 
son we knew— and he is not dead yet. 
The mystery was subsequently solv^ed 
when we found that he religiously read 
through all the patent medicine adver- 
tisements of the Los Angeles 'Times,' 
and we got to hating him so for his 
symptoms that we used to wish he would 
take some of the remedies prescribed, 
and die a natural death — that is, a nat- 
ural death for such an idiot. 

Sierra Madre is an extensive hamlet 
on the slope of the Sierra Madre moun- 



E 
97 



A Canuck down South, 

tains, overlooking the fertile valley of 
San Gabriel and about six miles from 
Pasadena and sixteen from Los Angeles, 
on the Kite-shaped Track, its station be- 
ing Santa Anita. It is devoted to the 
cultivation of oranges, lemons, apricots, 
figs, grapes and the tuberculous bacillus. 
As a health resort it is fast coming to 
the front, and seems to merit its reputa- 
tion. Its little cemetery does its best 
to prosper with the rest, but is not a 
success. It is a pathetic little God's 
Acre under the kindly shadow of the 
eternal hills. There are a few well- 
kept graves and several costly head- 
stones, but these are the exception. To- 
mato cans usually do service as mortu- 
ary urns and flower pots, but as the 
weeds conceal them and the flowers as 
i^ell, they are quite as good as Carrara. 
The whole place is usually a blaze of 
wild sunflowers, and honeycombed with 
gopher holes, while often the jack rabbit 
or the cotton-tail sits, lost in reflection 
beneath its stupendous ears amid the 



In Arcadia. 

lonely graves . The epitaphs, when de- 
ciphered, are not cheerful. The young 
may die, but the old must, says Long- 
fellow, and in any properly regulated 
cemetery youth finds comfort in reading 
that so-and-so died at eighty or ninety, 
and in finding that he stands a good 
chance under the system of averages of 
being able to revisit that cemetery many 
times yet before he forgets to return to 
the bustling world. But our cemetery 
deals not easily with this simple faith of 
the young. Here lie, in the majority, 
tliose of our own age, stricken down be- 
fore their prime, their ideals unsullied, 
their hopes unrealized. Here lie some 
whose history we learn, lonely strangers 
Avhom a broad human sympathy has laid 
in the bosom of the eternal mother, far 
from heme and friends, some whose de- 
serted and neglected graves bear mute 
testimony to the haste with which the 
nursing relative packed his or her trunk 
with one hand and closed the dead eyes 
with the other, grief long since discount- 



99 

LorC- 



A Canuck down South. 

ed in the early stages of the wearying 
malady and thoughts of home and relief 
and rest making welcome the close of the 
tragedy. 

When I was in Southern California I 
wrote an article in which I stated that 
the country could not progress any faster 
without pulling the earth out of its orbit, 
and that a man going hunting over waste 
lands in the morning, was apt to lose 
his way on his return home at nigiht among 
the orchards that had been planted on 
the same ground during ihe day. A 
Oalifomia paper piinted the article, but 
on second thought, and at this distance, 
I would qualify the statement, by admit- 
ting that the bustle of trade in and 
around Sierra Madre was not sufficiently 
loud to prevent my sleeping at nig(ht. 
Not that Sierra Madre was unenterpria- 
ing. The place had a 'bus driver, in- 
surance agent, press correspondent, pri- 
vate banker, real estate broker, newi 
agent, and so on. The only trouble was 
that when this man wen>t to town, busi- 



100 



In Arcadia. 

ness languished until his return. He 
was also agent for a firm of undertakers, 
and was in consequence interested in 
the progress of every invalid. He dis- 
played great anxiety about my health 
from the first, and although we are fast 
friends, 1 feel that I disappointed him 
by the rapidity of my recuperation. 

Touting for trade, while the subject is 
still alive, is not uncommon am.ong 
Southern California undertakers. Cne 
day a man came up our avenue while I 
v,as on the verandah. 

'How do you do?' he said, bowing. 
Every one bows to us in the country 
parts of California, whether they know 
Uo or not, just as they do in French 
Canadian districts. It saves trouble if 
one leaves his hat at home. 

I gave him good day and he came up 
the steps, expatiating upon the view of 
the valley and mountains. Oalifomians 
have the idea that the rest of the earth 
is flat, stale a.nd unprofitable, and it 
does not do to try to undeceive them, 



101 



A Canuck down South. 

unless one is the bigger man. After he 
bad heard my opinion, he said. 

'Out here for your health, I suppose.* 

'Yes/ I replied, 'ordered to a warm 
place, to escape a warmer.' 

He laughed so heartily that I at once 
knew he was an agent of some kind. 
Agents can always see the point of a 
joke. But he quickly grew serious once 
more, and said, 

'You're cautious, you're shrewd, you're 
the kind of man I like to meet. Xow 
I'm sure you would like to have some 
positive assurance as to your future com- 
fort. I can give you that, at least, bo 
far as your mortal remains are concern- 
ed. I represent Messrs. Cofhn & Grave.^, 
of Pasadena- Give me the date of j'^our 
birth, and I'll get the other details from 
your wife later. She can telephone 
when you die, and we'll hiave you in cold 
storage within forty minutes. And say,' 
here he leaned confidentially towards 
me^-'If your wife gets her message in 
ahead of our regular agent here, wo'll 



102 



In Arcadia. 

allow her the usual commission, of 
course.' 

I told the man I would be deeply 
grieved to give my custom to any one 
else ; to arrange for a first-class funeral, 
and to come back, in which event 1 
would cheerfully supply the corpse. He 
did not seem at all pleased when he 
went away, and he never oame back. 
Perhaps I looked too healthy. 

When the two or three livery horses 
of which Sierra Madre could boast were 
engaged by luckier people, we walked, 
but that was seldom. The grades are 
too steep. There is not a level hundred 
yards within the town limits, and in 
many places one could step from one's 
attic into a neighbor's parlor. It was 
the easiest thing in tlie world to drop a 
hint into a neighbor's ear, if one started 
it right, and as for scandal, it never stop- 
ped between the highest house in the 
Sien-a and the lowest in the valley. But 
it climbed up just as easij^ too. Every- 
body helped it along, they were so soci- 



103 



A Canuck down South. 

able in Sierra ]SIadre, and so kindly. 
Not being so active as scandal, we drove, 
and tbe drives were delightful. There 
was the Baldwin ranch to visit, where a 
fine Tcicing stable is kept, there was pret- 
ty Monrovia — whose lights glittered fic- 
turesquely through the night, there wa^ 
the San Gkubriel Mission, ^vit■h its quaint 
Mexican village, and last, but by no 
means least, there was Pasadena, the 
Crown of tthe Valley, home of million- 
naires and one of the show towns of 
the state. If one cared for horseback 
riding, it was to be had, and what could 
be more delightful than a canter through 
shady avenues in early morning, while 
the birds were straining their harmoni- 
ous throats to greet the sun, and the 
mists were bathing the towering hills 
or billowing in iridescent masses in the 
valley beneath, for Sierra Madre, like 
Mohammed's cotlin, hangs between 
heaven and earth, between snovvy peak 
and far-stretching plain. 
We celebrated New Year's day in an 



104 



In Arcadia. 

unique manner. There are and have 
been many carnivals in various parts of 
the world, but to Pasadena alone be- 
longs the honor of holding a midsummer 
carnival in midwinter, a tournament of 
roses on New Year's Day, and we, with 
thoughts of Canadian carnivals, sparkling 
with ice and snow, still treasured in our 
hearts went to see the Pasadena pageant. 

The drive of six miles to the town was 
entrancing. The birds twittered and 
rose and settled in our path, the gophers 
scurried out of the way and an infrequent 
hare sat up palpitating behind the sage 
brush, petrified by the thunder of in- 
numerable hoofs all trending towards 
the one point. 

The little town of ten thousand people 
was a fairy-land that day. Its broad 
avenues, shaded with paJms, eucalypti 
and peppers, overflowed with a riotous 
torrent of flowers, in whose odorous and 
tinted billows the vehicles they adorned 
seemed siwept along as though over- 
whelmed by a mountainous wall cf 



105 



A Canuck down South. 

■waters. The horses waded breast, and 
even shoulder high in roses, the carriage 
wiheels were clogged with calla lilies. 
Mermaids, beautiful as a dreajn, rose, 
wreathed with smilax, and blossoms, 
from the sea of flowers, their lissome 
forms gleaming through the billows of 
greenery crested with rainbow-tinted 
foam. Mermem not inharmoniously blew 
horns dripping the universal sea. Here 
floated along some vast ark, ponderously 
magnificent, splasbed to the eavv-« with 
living color, there all JapaD spoke from 
mystic chrj-santhemums, Six-in-hands, 
tally-hos, four-in-^hands, spans, tandems 
and single vehicles abounded, and all 
were a bank of flowers. There were bi- 
cycles also, some a mass of moving blos- 
soms; and it is impossible to estimate 
the quantity of flowers tbat on that day 
were used to grace the tournament. We 
had never seen anything like it, and 
never expect to again. 

Our Arcadia was not without the 
charms of sport. In the immediate vi- 



In Arcadia. 

cindty and within sound of the dinner 
bell we had quail among the copses, jack 
rabbits in the vineyards and washes, 
equirrels in the live oaks, gophers in the 
wheat fields, wild pigeons, blue jays, 
domestic cats that made night hideous, 
an occasional coyote skulking round the 
chicken corrals and the infrequent tramp 
disposed to take charge of our valuables. 
Among the mountains, the wild cat 
crouched along the brunch, the mountain 
lion stole through, the underbrusih, lihe 
sheep clzimbered upon almost imaccessible 
crags and the grizzly lumbered along, 
covering the miles with an easy ra- 
pidity that was astonisliing in one of his 
build. I did not hunt for bim, hav- 
ing gone to California for my health, 
and I was careful where I went to 
sleep. A man from Ventura, who went 
to sleep in the Sierra, woke to find that 
a grizzly bear had actually stepped across 
his body. He has always boaslted what 
he "vvould have done had he awakened at 
that interesting moment, but we noticed 



107 



A. Canuck dotvn South. 

tliat he could now never sleep within 
sight of a mountain. 

I would have added blackbirds and tur- 
key buzzards to my list, only that these 
are sacred birds in California. Tlie 
blackbirds throng the busy streets of 
the towns as numerous and as imper- 
tinent as the sparrows in Canada. I do 
not suppose there would have been any 
objection to my hunting them, on ac- 
count of my peculiar sityle of shooting. 
All the game in the neighborhood soon 
got to know me as a mild mannered 
gentleman of pacific intentions. Ev^n 
the Jack rabbits entered into the true 
spirit of the sport, and one in particular 
would often sit on his haunches amo.ng 
the orange trees and hoist his ears for a 
target. When a bullet passed near 
enough to suggest that I might be grow- 
ing dangerous, he would shift his ground 
a few yards and I would have to try for 
the range again by sighting a few shots 
on the bams or distant mountains. The 
'enfant terrible,' -with fine sarcasm, always 



108 



Ill Arcadia. 

cliaracterized my rifle practice as ' bang- 
ing the mountains/ 

Not the least pleasing of our occupa- 
tions, and one which, strange to say, 
never tired Diogenes or myself, consisted 
in lying beneath a spreading live oak on 
some ranch and Tvatcihing the orange 
gatherers at work, swart Mexicans and 
yellow Chinese, imder huge sombreros or 
wasihbowl hats of straw, who, pouch ou 
shoulder and ugly knife ia hand, reaped 
the juicy hai-vest that clustered so thickly 
upon the trees that there s>Gemed no 
shadow under the boughs but only a blaze 
of sunshine. At hand hage waggons were 
drawn up with their teams of patient 
mules, or went lumbering down the 
slopes, laden with full boxes, to the cry 
of the driver and the incessant crackling 
of his long whip. 

When all else failed we derived con- 
siderable entertainment from the climate. 
California has more weather in a day 
than Canada has in a year, and Old 
Probs always explains a failure in his 



109 



A CanucTc dotcn South. 

predictions by the statement that hia 
forecasts got mixed in the mails. It ia 
to be understood that California extends 
through about ten degrees of latitude to 
begin with, then it extends up and down 
about three miles, and altitude gives as 
great a variety as latitude. Further, the 
state is washed by tihe Pacific on the 
west and dried by the American desert 
on the east. A man can select his own 
climate, and where we were he has a 
variety of choice almosit every day with- 
in walking reacli. This is very embar- 
rassing to a stranger. He gets up in the 
morning and perhaps happens to look in- 
to the valley which is overcast and full 
of fog, so he reaches for his waterproof 
and umbrella- By the time he has thus 
equipped himself, he looks at the moun- 
tains, and when he sees them covered 
with new fallen snow he rubs his eyes 
and decides to wear an ulster and fur 
cap. When he gets to the front door 
in this guise, he sees the calla lilies and 
the orange and lemon trees round about 



110 



In Arcadia. 

blooming in warm sunshine, and goes 
back to put on a linen duster and som- 
brero, and by-and-by he comes home 
with a cold in his head, having acciden- 
tally wandered into a climate that takes 
not kindly to linen dusters. In time 
he learns to wear heavy woollen under- 
wear all the year round. 

If a man stays at home he can enjoy 
the same climate for six months at a 
time, and the next six months is the 
twin brother of the first. When a San 
Franciscan sees the sun he thinks he has 
discovered a comet, and the Los Angel- 
enian will write a column editorial and 
half a dozen sonnets on a shower of 
rain one could carry in a bucket. And 
the biggest newspaper in the southern 
counties will publish his efforts. But 
I am not surprised at this. After one 
has lived some months in souTliem Cali- 
fornia, a vague dissatisfactioa permeates 
his soul, and it finally dawna upon him 
that a continuity of fine days is mono- 
tonous. When, day after day, week 



111 



A Canuck down South. 

in and week out, the sun shines, the 
fio^\'ers bloom and the birds sing, the 
stranger finds himself praying for rain. 
Then he praj'S for snow^ and as the 
Land of Sunshine continues to verify its 
name, he gradually increases his demands 
until he is importuning heaven for hail, 
wind, cyclones, blizzards, tornados, 
waterspouts, cloudbursts, anything in 
fact which will afford a change of weath- 
er even at the expense of all his wife's 
relations. But, if he is wise, he will not 
confess this weakness to a Californiaji. 
During our sojourn a man was arrested 
in Los Angeles for beating his wife, and 
it came out at his trial that he knocked 
her down with the family thermometer 
because she had complained that the 
temperature did not fall low enough in 
a California winter. 

Once, and once only, we had snow on 
the level, and it scarcely remained long 
enough to permit a snowball to be made. 
That. was on March 2 and 3, 1896, and 
the whole country turned out, including 



In Arcadia. 

the governor of the state, to iuvestigatt 
the phenomenon. When we arose that 
morning the ground was dusted over 
with snow, and through the cool, snow- 
seented air every wind waft brought the 
heavy perfume of orange blossoms. The 
sky was overcast. Great clouds rolled 
down the mountain slopes, coming and 
going and changing shape every few min- 
utes, while through the otherwise quiet 
air, from some height above the clouds, 
wild geese were screaming discontentedly 
on their way seaward. Whenever the 
clouds lifted, there, on the bold sunmiits 
of the Sierra, the snow lay piled, and in 
the canons back among the mountain* 
we heard the sullen reverberation of 
thunder peals rolling like the sound of 
some titanic drum calling to battle the 
powers of evil. The power of prose is 
inadequate to do justice to the weird- 
ness and beauty of the scene, and even 
the following attempt to describe it in 
verse falls far short of conveying th» 
proper impression : 



A Canuck doicn South. 

A WINTER DAY IN THE SIERRA. 
O'er the Sierra scarce the moon yestre'en 
Was risen, to flood each aombre peak with 
light. 

Ere came a cloud host through the gusty 
night. 
Storming the crags. Sheer canon walls be- 
tween, 

They swept, and hid bare ledge and living 
green. 

Hoarse thunder pealed frcm unseen height 
to height, 

As though the vast hills boasted of their 
might, 

Though Chaos' self upon them seemed to 
lean. 

Dawn drew aside night's veil of mist, and 
came 

Across the hills. The clouds retired, 
and lo! 
On every wind swept crag, as Day look- 
ed forth. 
Bright in tlie southern sunshine gleamed 
th9 snow, 
A vision of the unforgotten North 
*Twixt golden skies and poppy fields aflame. 

IN THE VALLEY. 

Snow on the hills, but in the valley, flow- 
ers, 
Pepples aflame aed orange blooms who8« 
scent 



114 



In Arcadia. 

with the faint odor of the suow is blent. 
Snow on the peaks, bat in the canons, 

showers, 
And torrents drinking strength from stormy 
hours. 
The geese wheel seaward through the 

clouds half spent, 
neeing the snow and screamiag discon- 
tent. 
But in the vale birds trill in odorous bow- 
ers. 

Summer is in the vale, though in the 
heights 
The bandit Winter lurks to sei:2e his prey. 
Still springs the grain, vines grow and 
fruit delights 
Sun and soft winds through many a gold- 
en day 
In many an Eden valley, nestling warm 
Below the stern Sierra, wrapped in 
storm. 

The Slimmer of southern California 
corresponds in its effect with our winter. 
It is the fallow season, during which 
the toil bakes and brings nothing forth. 
The trees do not sit in sackcloth, but 
they certainly don ashes enough to sat- 
isfy the greatest mourner at the wailing 
J^&ee of the Jews, till the whole country 



i. Canuck down South. 

looks like a tramp badly in need of soap. 
Even in winter there is an occasioaal 
Sant'Anna which sweeps up the dust 
till it shrouds the hills and obscures the 
very sun, and that dust will remain float- 
ing in the atmosphere for several days, 
without, however, affecting the lungs. 
Farther north, in Utah, we heard ot' a 
similar storm which so coated the tele- 
graph wkes and poles with salt that a 
hose reel had to be called into requisi- 
tion . A common error concerning the 
California summer is that it is unendur- 
ably hot . The story is often told of 
the bad Californian who died, and after 
a day or two in the place modem theol- 
ogy does not believe in, sent back for 
his blankets . Californians tell that 
story, but they tell it is a man from 
Yuma, Arizona, where, it is said, the 
hens lay hard-boiled eggs in winter. 
From what I could gather about the 
California summer, the thermometer is 
entirely to blame. It persists in trying 
to make people believe it is overworked. 



116 



In Arcadia. 

In this dry climate, even in winter, I 
have known it go up to a hundred and 
twenty, when the heat was really no 
more oppressive than it would be at 
Montreal with the thermometer at 
eighty. Heat out there is not oppres- 
sive, hut pleasant, if somewhat ener- 
vating. One just wants to lie out and 
scak in it. I do not mean perspire, 
for that is a rare phenomenon . And if 
one feels too hot he has only to go 
around the house into the shade, and put 
on an overcoat. Often one might 863 
a man go down the sunny side of a 
street in Los Angeles with his ooat over 
his arm, while on the opposite side hi» 
friends were wearing overcoats. At 
sundown the man who has no overcoat 
is like to perish with cold. These pe- 
culiarities of climate explain why ladies 
are to be seen dressed in muslins and 
with gay sunshades, while around their 
necks are twined huge furs. 

It rains about a fortnight, off and on, 
during the -winter or rainy season. Then 



117 



A Canuck down South. 

from the middle of ]\lay to the end of 
October there is never a cloud in the 
sky. Once in a dozen years a section 
of the Pacific Ocean that has lost its 
way runs up against a Sierra peak, and 
there is a cloudburst. One such visited 
Sierra Madre in 1894. It dropped in for 
five minutes, and by that time the m An 
stret -was a foaming torrent flowing 
breast high. One man told me tliat he 
had not seen such an active Tnovemciit 
in real estate since the boom. Moun- 
tain property that even the boom coiJd 
not sell was carried down and turned 
into town lots. He himself had every- 
thing clean washed o£E his land except 
the mortgage, and that, he said, he had 
to liquidate himself. The canons were 
roaring sluices, filled to the brim with 
whirling whitecaps that bore down every- 
thing before them, even vast trees and 
huge boulders, and ploughed across the 
country rofds, cutting deep trenches. 
And to make matters worse, the poet 
of the Los Angeles 'Times' came out 



118 



In Arcadia. 

simultaneously with a poem in blank 
verse, beginning — 

Drop, gentle dews, from heaven till the 

mirth- 
F\il earth Is moved with an ecstatic thrill. 

He ^\ihiO imagines tiiat because two 
nations speak the same language, they 
miist of neceesity go hand in hand, like 
loving children, through the world has 
never read the history of Greece, amd 
ki'ows nothing of the real feeling which 
the limited States entertains towards 
England and Canada. We were in Oali- 
fornia during the Venezuelan trouble, 
and the best I can say foir the spirit of 
the United Statesians is that those who 
do not hate us, have no more love for tw 
than they have for Germans, Turlis or 
Fiji Islanders. Our one terror was that 
the editor of the Los Angeles 'Times,' a 
mild mannered, kindly gentleman in pri- 
vate life, would leave his sub-ediltor to 
attend to the ferocious editx>rials against 
all things British, and girding on his 
e^vord again, make a descent upon Sierra 



119 



A Canuck down South. 

Madre, and butcher us one and all. He 
Avould have had some difficulty, hovr- 
excT, for the Canadians were in pretty- 
strong force there, while the entire 
«tat€ could, and would, have afforded a 
batt^ion to defend the flag that for a 
thousand years has braved the battle 
and the breeze. Tliere is not, in fact, a 
Californian in California, or, ait least, 
they are very scarce. Bees gather where 
th-ere is honey, and the state is full of 
^ircwd down-easters, canny Scotchmen, 
.stalwart Chinese, ciuaint Japanese, Eng- 
lishmen and Canadians. If the flood 
wea-e repeated, and California spared, the 
races of man would not lack representa- 
tion. One cannot throw a stone any- 
where in CaJifomLa without hitting a 
Canadian. A Canadian has been mayor 
of Los Angeles, a Gaaiadian has been 
prefddent of the Chamber of Commerce 
in the same city, a Canadian is at the 
head of several railways, and he has 
Cajsaidian brakemen and conductors un- 
der him. JTiere are Canadian physi- 



120 



/»- Arcadia. 

cians, engineers and ranchers. I have 
met Canadian cowboys. The British 
vice-consul is a Torontonian. Ontario, 
the model colony of the state, was found- 
ed by Canadiaiis, they thirong Redlands 
a-nd Eiverside, and in. one toAvn they 
elected a Canadian mayor and board of 
aldexmen, as a protest againsit the tail- 
tv;isters. The only place I did not find 
a Canadian was in gaol, but I think 
Diogenes will rectify that if he keeps on. 
They do not really speak English in 
California. "Wihen people go there first, 
they call a burro a donkey, but when 
they have resided there a while they 
call a donkej- a burro, realizing the 
value cf foreign words in cultured 
speech. Since we have returned I am 
ahvays, quite inadverten'tly, calling a 
horse a broncho; I have ceased to canter, 
and now lope; every back yard is a cor- 
ral, and garden a ranch. "We no longer 
water our flowers, we irrigate them, and 
I never borrow a quarter, though I 
gometimcs ^rike a friend for two bit*. 



121 



A CanvcJc down South. 

In this way my friends know I have tra- 
velled. A few days before we left, Di- 
ogenes came to mc and said, tiiat aa I 
was going, he had no longer an iacentive 
to be idle, and so had gone to work. I 
asked him what kind of work he was 
doing, and he said he -»vas a solicitor. 

'A what!' I said. 

'A solicitor.' 

'How much did you pay for your de- 
gree?' ■ 

']!!^o thing. I jiLsit jnade up my niirid I 
would like the work.' 

'Your usual modesty. Because you 
mnrage to keep out of gaol, you fancy 
you know somatliing of law.' 

'Who said anything about law,' he 
cried, indignantly, 'I'm going to sell 
bicycles.' 

And then I learned that in California 
a canvasser is a solicitor. 

Our Arcadia was not without its myths 
aud legendi!, its oracJes and seers. One 
can best arrive aJt the vices aud vir- 
tues of a people by reading the aiver- 



In Arcadia. 

tisements in the daily press. The people 
may indignantly repudiate a charge oc 
superstition or gullibility, but if the 
papers are filled wiitli fortunetellers' cards 
and patent medicine and specialist ad- 
vertisemenits, it is not because the ad- 
vertisers are eager to add t-o the revenue 
of the press. The columns of the soutli- 
em California press are filled with such 
tbangs. Then there is always a column 
devoted to business eluances, some of the 
bargains offered being truly generous. 
One I remember was an offer of a half 
interest for one hundred dollars of a 
business that brou^t in two hundred 
dollars per month. If the advertiser 
had braved it out a fortnight, he might 
have been his own partner. 




123 






CHAPTER V. 

In the SlEKKA. 

'Nmetecn of the Sierra peaks rise to 
a height of ten thousand feet, and seven 
of them rise still higher, until Mou.it 
Whitney wears the crown, rising to the 
lieavens to the height of 14,900 feet. 
Seme of these summits are stiil warm 
with volcanic heat. There they stand, 
white-hooded, with glaciers moving along 
their flanks, as if a thousand years were 
but as yesterday, letting loose the moun- 
tain strer.ras that go singing down to the 
sea. There is the divine sculpture of 
•fche rocks, the lakes that mirror those 
eternal ramparts, the great forests that 
sing in the storm and »igh in the sum- 
mer breeze and the groups of sequoia 
overmatching in height and circumfer- 



124 



In the Sierra. 

ence any other conifers on the globe. 
There the clouds come down and kiss 
the mountains, and the lesson is renewed 
every day of eternal repose and majesty 
and strength. The mountains are not 
solitary, but are rich in floral and ani- 
mal life. There butterflies flit and 
birds sing and huge grizzly bears corae 
out of caves and caverns. There the 
mariposa lily unfolds its petals and the 
snow plant, red as blood, springs in a 
day mysteriously out of the margin of 
receding banks of snow. And there the 
lakes repose in bowls with the moun- 
tains for rims.* 

These words of Senator Perkins are 
very pretty and very tme, but one has 
to run almost throughout the state to 
see all that he depicts. On a mare 
moderate scale, however, almost any por- 
tion of the mountain region affords such 
beauty and even approximately such gran- 
deur, and no small portion of our plea- 
sure while at Sierra Madre was derived 
from watching the ever-changing aspect 

125': 



A CanucJc down South. 

of the hills and wandering among their 
■verdant canons and upon their lofty 
heights 

When we arrived at our cottage home 
in Sierra Madre the children were no 
sooner out of the carriage before they 
clamored to be taken up the mountains 
that seemed to rise out of our back 
yard. It was almost impossible to con- 
vince ourselves, much less them, that the 
first outlier of the range was quite half 
a mile away, and it was still more diffi- 
cult to believe that tho^e rock masses 
were towering up four, five and six thou- 
sand feet. The only occasion when a 
proper estimate of the height of the 
range could be formed was upon a cloudy 
day; when the mists would ebb and flow. 
Then, while the upper part of the range 
would be wholly hidden, some magnifi- 
cent knoll that on fine days we mistook 
for a gentle elevation would stand out 
against the background of fleecy white, 
towering up to twice the height of our 
ewn Mount Royal. Ten minutes later 



Ill the Sierra. 

the clouds would pait, and that WU 
would sink into insignificance and be- 
come merged once more in the general 
contour of the range. Morning, noon 
and night, the hills seemed instinct with 
life. Even in the sunshine and basking 
under a cloudless sky, they changed from 
hour to hour ; and in the monotony of 
our California life we grew to love them 
and to watch their every mood. On 
them alone was to be seen any semblance 
of the green robe to which we were ac- 
customed and for which we vainly 
yearned in the general landscape of the 
more level valley. Sometimes, too, a 
careless hand would start a fire, and all 
night long it would seethe and bUlow far 
up among the stars, sometimes creeping 
like a fiery serpent aroimd a projecting 
crag and sometimes rushing up a piny 
canon, which at dawn gleamed, a black- 
ened ruin, in the rising sun. 

Among these hills and upon their very 
summits are to be found sanitoriumis 
vAxere the oonsumptive flees from tbt 



127 



A Cdnwlc down South. 

great flood of death which, is corLsfcajitly 
rising about the race of man. Mount 
Lowe and Wilson's Peak are two such, 
adjacent to Sierra Madre, both attainable 
bj^ trails and the former reached also by 
a mountain railway rivalling the Pagi. 
On the trails, especially that to Wilson's 
Peak, the burro is used, an animal which 
has done as much for the developnrieriit of 
California as the railway itself, for with- 
out the burro to bear the pioneer and his 
pack over and among the mo-imtains Cali- 
fornia had hardly even j-et stood in need 
of the iron horse. 

The burro is not quite a donkey, though 
I doubt whether his own mother could 
explain the <iifFercnce. He is a kind of 
Shetland pony run to ears, or more cor- 
rectly a mongrel or poor relation of every 
member of the equme race. He is cot 
described in Dr. Goldsmith's 'Anima.ted 
Xature,' for obvious reasons. His move- 
ments are so slow that physicians pre- 
scribe burro riding aa a sedative. It is 
impossible to catch any disease on burro 



12K 



In the Sierra. : 

back, not even locomotor ataxia. He 
haa a voice nearly aa big as his ears and 
as musical as a boiler factory. Oa -lie 
other band, if the burro is not fass^, he is 
safe. His surefootedness in. nariOAV 
JJaces is tb-e envy of politicians, and 
wben we decided that it would be a pleas- 
ant departure to celebrate Christmas Day 
by an open-air picnic among the mauin- 
tains, we decided also thait we would 
make the excursion on burro back. 

WOson's Peak is reached by two trails, 
one a waggon, road from Pasadena, which 
concerns us no farther, and one the old 
trail from Sierra Madre, on which two 
counterfeit bills could scarcely pass one 
another. When in a generous mood this 
latter is about sdx feet wide, but it fre- 
quently narrows to less than three. A 
yard is enough for a burro, since he al- 
ways finds four feet to walk on, but the 
accommodation seems unduly limited 
where there is a rise of some thousands 
of feet om the one side and a sheer fall 
of other thousands on the outer edae, 



129 



A Canuck down South. 

especially if tke borro pauses absent- 
mindedly and reaches ouit after a spray 
of leaves, while the ground begins to^slip 
from under him. In such a case the rider 
wishes for the wings of a dove or for a 
parachute. 

The road to the foot of the trail skirts 
the flank of the Sierra, under majestic 
uplifts, in contour rot unlike the triangu- 
lar folds of silk ghopkeei)er& display in 
their windows. At evening the depart- 
ing rays of the sun light up and mellow 
these peaks until they resemble silk in 
texture also, but in tthe unromantic day 
the sparse pines that cling to each round- 
ed mass make a pate not unlike that of 
Diogenes, who has a hair restorer which 
he recommeads to every one as infallible. 
Immediaitely below, here and there, amid 
slender leaved peppers, with drooping 
scarlet berries, or the eucalipti, Austra- 
lian visitants which shed their bark and 
not their leaves, or oftener still among 
graceful palms and vast leaved bananas, 
the cottages of Sierra Madre cling to the 



In the Sierra. 

hillsides, always surrounded by lemon and 
orange groves, at tihat time heavy with 
golden spheres. The San Gabriel valley 
lies outspread beyond, white in patches 
of arid, cactus breeding mesas and in 
places green with fruit plantations; and 
SUII farther off the horizon is serried 
with a line of mountains, rise above lise, 
the higher peaks dazzling with their 
crowns of snow. And over all that day 
was such peace that the buzzing of a fly 
or clear call of the cicada through the 
ambient heat was eoul stirring as the 
bugle blare to troops inactive on a bat- 
tle's edge. 

But there was not one blade of gra -s. 
Here, indeed, distance lends enchant- 
menit. Wherever we might ride, save in 
the mountains, nature mourned for hor 
children. Her sweet form lay bare to 
curious eyes, '•acking the soft, clinging 
drapery of verdure that tempts the soirl 
as thei Greek gown lures to love. But all 
was shortly to change with the coming of 
spring, a season more etherial than 
any other land can boast, and amid 



131 



A Canuck down South. 

'The lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.' 
earth was to rejuvenate herself and mesa 
and bare hillside to don an emerald ce- 
ment the like to which few other lands 
might shoAV. 

Even though grass was lacking I waa 
charmed with the scene, and said so -to 
Diogenes, who was riding in the rear. 
I had not turned my head and when I 
was answered by a word much used in 
excommunications, I turned round in 
amazement, only to find that the epithet 
had not been intended for me. Diogenea 
is built like a pair of compasses, and 
when he rides a burro is apt to stub his 
toe unless he keeps his knees as hifjh as 
hd'S head. He had forgotten this while ad- 
miring the prospect, and had let his legs 
hang doAvn, whereupon he ran the gamut 
of evolution and became transformed 
from a quadruped into a biped. His 
burro slipped from under and left him 
standing in the road. He resigned his 
position as superintendent of the local 
Sunday-school the next day, although I 
had told him I would not turn informer. 



In the Sierro. 

Tbe Princess's daughter, who is in- 
cidentally mine also, five years of age, 
had her own burro to ride and was se- 
cured to the saddle. She rode astride. 
The side-saddle can be seen in southera 
California, in museums, where the new 
woman can laugh at it and scoff at her 
mother. A few such saddles are kept by 
liverymen for the use of tourists from 
the east, but as a general rule women in 
this region ride nature's way, and I have 
seen so many girls ride astride, so many 
bloomers and hundred-button gaiters in 
California that I am sure I will blush at 
the suggestiveness of the side-saddle for 
many a day to come. The first time I 
saw a young woman riding in bloomera 
I thought an accident had happened, and 
took to the woods to relieve her embar- 
rassment. Mais nous avons change tout 
cela, and, after all, bloomers are not im- 
moral — they are only distressdngly ugly. 
If women want mare freedom in th-sir 
garments, let them by all means drcsB 
like a man, and a graceful shape will look 



133 



A Canuck doicn South, 

rv\'eet and modest enough. Compromisea 
are never artistic. 

We used tlie Mexican saddle, though a 
•awnhorse or a tea-tray w ould have done 
as well, for any one who would fall off 
a burro would be immediately arrested 
for aitt^mpted suicide. The Mexican sad- 
dle has huge stirrups of vrood or leather 
that would fib a Chicago girl, and lias 
also a platform in front upon which to 
stand while admiring the scenery. This 
pommel, as it is called, was, I am told, 
devised by a vigilance committee to pre- 
vent cruelty to animals, as it requires 
a limited corporation to ride a saddle so 
equipped. A dear fat friend of ours could 
not accompany us because, as he jocu- 
larly remarked, he could not 'stoma^a' 
a Mexican saddle, unless he rode back- 
wards, in which case the draught betweco 
the burro's ears would give him lumbago. 

Shortly we reached the commencement 
of the trail, and I may as well confess 
that it was not long before I had to be 
careful when shutting my mouth not to 



134 



In the Sierra. 

bite my lieart in two. Tlie lieii- to my 
debts, aged three, wiho sat at my saddle 
bow, added to my delight at intervals 
by iisking me what I would do were the 
burro to fall down this or that abyss, at 
the bottom of which tiit; pine trees look- 
ed like grass and the rushing torrent like 
a silver thread. At tim^, one foot vvas 
contracting rheumatism from the draught 
of some unfathomable gorge over which 
it hung, while its fellow had difficulty in 
avoiding a square league of mountain. 
Once the child leaned over to pluok 
some blossoms growing on the edge of a 
precipice. He did not get them, and I 
got only half a breath, while the burro 
cast a reproachful glance at both of us as 
he awung suddenly in towards safety. I 
gave him no sympathy, however, sis for 
some time he had been displaying a sav- 
age joy in walking upon the outermosv 
edge of the trail, heedless of my nerves 
and of the interest of the company which 
carries an insurance upon my life. I 
ha-d frequently heard of this peculiari!-y 



135 



A Canuck down South. 

of the burro and never thought of the 
cxpianniiou of it until I saw Diogenes 
on one. It is a mistake to say the burro 
takes the outer fdge of the trail because 
he is accustomed to carrying packs, he 
does so either to get room for his own 
or his rider's ears. 

We reached a height from which we 
could look down upon San Gabrdel Val- 
ley, and what a sight that was! The or- 
ange and lemon trees looked like those 
pjgmy plants the Chinese excel > in culti- 
vating. The scattered cottages looked like 
dolls' houses, the orchards like checker- 
boards, the waste lands showed their dr>' 
watercourses which give them the IocaI 
name of washes, hills once respectable 
became mere ant hi51s, and Pomona and 
Los Angeles seemed near enough to one 
another to have the one board of alder- 
iT'.en. And beyond, through a gap in 
the distant mountains, gleamed the Pa- 
cific, a broad sheet of silver, with Santa 
Catalina Island set in its midst, like a 
sapphire. 



136 



I7i the Sierra. 

Th€re is one loop on the trail, scratclied 
on the face of a perpendicular cliff, from 
whicJh, we looked across a canon and saw 
■w3\eire our burros were about to carry 
US. It was not a soothing prospect. A 
cloud or two hid the view, somewhat, 
but, all the same, we noted the sheer 
rise from base to summit certainly not 
less than three thousand feet, and up the 
face of that magnificent uplift winds the 
trail, a mere line in the sky, enough to 
make one dizzy merely to look at it. We 
had a camera with us and a picture of 
one of us on that cliff now adorns my 
library. I wanted to get a companion 
picture of Diogenes falling down the 
canon, but he very selfishly declined to- 
accommodate me. He could have done 
it just .as easy as not, since the trail is 
only two feet wide at one of the most 
dangerous places. Monitreal readers will 
get some idea of thia trail if I ask them 
to pile several French Churob towers one 
upon ihe other and then ride round the 
topmost coping, till they have accom- 



137 



A Canuck down South. 

plished a few miles. Nay, this is below 
tfae truth, for there are places where we 
skirted precipdces at whose base the 
French Church towers could scarcely 
have been distinguished. And yet we 
were not balf-way up that tower of Ba- 
bel of mountains, giant reared to heaven,, 
beyond the reach of flood, silent, desert- 
ed, awful in their titanic majesty. 

After an eternity of this tight-r>pe 
business the scene changed. We were 
still creeping skyward, but were now so 
deep among the hills that the ravines 
began to grow shallower. And then, 
amiid the sliifting shadows of that golden 
day, flung from aromatic pines, steeping 
tlie soul in memories of Canadian woods, 
I drew one easy breath at last. We 
were not at the summit, for we contem- 
plated returning the same day to close 
onr Christmas in Canadian fashion with 
a heavy dinner and an evening round a 
roaring grate fire. But we were so high 
that we feared our burros' ears would dis- 
turb the astral maps, and had St. Pst-er 



Ill the Sierra. 

appeared to ask for our passporte we 
would scarcely have been surprised, al- 
though Diogenes would certainly have 
been embarrassed for once. 

Our picnic was a success, and none of 
us win ever forget that Christmas meal 
amid the shifting shadows of the pines 
upon a golden, glowing afternoon, beside 
a purling stream, cryaital clear, ice cold. 
Our ride homeward was thrilling, but un- 
eventful. The burros actually trotted at 
tinges, and the rattle of stones loosened 
by their dainty feet to bound and re- 
bound into the sullen gorges was not the 
sweetest nor the most reassuring masic 
in a timid ear. 

That was my firsit venture among the 
Sierra, but their spell was upon me, and 
many a day thereafter I used to roam 
on foot upon the same trail, visiting 
canons and crags, at times with rifle or 
revolver, at times trusting entirely to the 
charm of nature for entertainment. One 
deserted shack, I shall not say where, 
for fear of reprisals, once tempted me to 



A Cmiuclc (loicn ^onth. 

iiicvestigate. }>elo\v stairs it was innocent 
enoiigii, but venturing further, into the 
attic, to which early gymnastic training 
alone enabled me to hoist myself, I found 
that I was among the haunts of 'moon- 
shiners.' There was no liquor, but there 
was case upon ease of little flasks, dry 
as myself, awaiting the nig-ht, Avhen 
stealthily through the gloom to that 
lonely six)t some desperate law-breaking 
private distiller, Adth revolver at his belt, 
would steal from some still more lonely 
recess among the mouu tains with a sus- 
picious barrel upon the back of a secrc- 
tdve burro and make those particles of 
blf wn glass capable of administering to the 
joys and sorrows of his felloAv-men. Some- 
times I would, when pining for the snows 
of Canada, pluck a rose in our garden, 
stack it in my button hole and breast 
the trail, to luxuriate within the half 
hour in banks of snow. Ouce when I 
had been thus engaged I found on my 
rettirn, M'ithin a few hours, that a friend 
kad been wrestling with the angel of 



140 



1)1 the Siara. 

God ai)d secured the blessmg of imiuor- 
tality, by so slender a hair is life held in 
that land of invalids. He had been scarce 
half an hour dead when I atrived, ye4; by 
that time his body was on the road to 
Pasadena in an undertaker's van, and all 
the world w^^s changed for those who 
loved hira. Some people have presenti- 
ments of such things, but I never have. 
Nothing important can happen to those 
the Princess loves but w^hat she feels it. 
Once she hurried me upon a railway 
journey on what I thought was bitt a 
wild-goose chase, upon one such presenti- 
ment and we arrived as though in re- 
sponse to the telegram we had never re- 
ceived. And sihe knows by intuition 
•whether I have been delayed by business 
or a fiiend at the club, w:hich renders 
her a somewhat embarrassing wife, or 
would do so if I were not the sainfc I 
am. Psychologists may explain this a^s 
they will, the fact remains, as I can at- 
test. Perhaps one must tndy live in and 
for others before such a gift is vou»ch- 
safed. The selfish are beneath it. 

141 



A Canuck down Soiiih. 

It was my good fortune to form one of 
a party invited to dedicate a new trail 
through the Sierra. A number of 
ladies had decided to be the first whose 
skirts would flutter at that high alti- 
tude, and the officials of the trail invited 
a number of men to accompany them in 
self-defence. We formed a gay caval- 
cade, and all the ladies rode astride 
(the Princess was not with us). A 
temporary trail, corkscrewing up a 
dreadful slope, almost made some of us 
slip over our burro's tail, a possibility 
which was, however, partly robbed of 
its terrors by the fact that, in such an 
event, we knew we would land in the 
lap of some of the opposite sex behind 
us, the cavalcade being in such manner 
arranged. The completed trail was not 
different from any other except that na- 
ture was still virgin about us. No van- 
dal hand had cut down the tavmy ma- 
drona or still more swarthy and snaky 
manzanita. The holly berries flashed 
their scarlet glow upon us, the bay tree 



142 



In the Sicrya. 

fanned us and the live oak scattered its 
shelly leaves and tremulous shadows 
everywhere. Graceful ferns and starry 
yucca pleased the eye, and we needed 
no warning to avoid that slender- 
€teramed, dark-leaved skulker among the 
heavier wood, for we knew the poison 
oak of old. So, on and up we mounted, 
now looking across a canon to the sheer 
sides of Monrovia mountain towering 
4,410 feet into the air, now looking down 
to catch a glimpse of tapering pines and 
to hear the murmur of some mountain 
stream. 

When the trail became too narow for 
our burros we advanced on foot. The 
line of the road had only been marked 
out, and we had some training in true 
mountaineering. At one point it was 
necessary to step from one spur of rock 
to another with a gorge seven hundred 
feet in depth yawning hungrily below. 
The ladies were more indefatigable than 
the men, and it shortly transpired that 
their enthusiasm arose from the fact that 



14.-] 



A Caiiurk down iSouth. 

a few hundred yards in advance on the 
line of the trail was a mountain stream 
upon whoso brink no woman had ever 
stood, and they were determined to visit 
and christen it. The chosen sponsor 
was a charming young lady, whose Chris- 
tian name was Oline, and after her the 
stream was to he named, with the pre- 
fix 'Saint,' 'all places and things being 
saints hereabouts, if Oline isn't,* as a 
maiden friend remarlced. The ceremony 
was short and simple. Standing on the 
ferny margin of the pool, which mur- 
mured down a shady and rocky canon, 
the slender, girlish figure bent, and in 
the hollow of her hand took up a sunny 
wavelet with which she performed the 
mystic rite. It was my privilege as 
poet laureate to record the christening 
in simple verse, .is follows : — 



144 



In the f^ierra, 

THE POOL OF SANT' OLINE. 

Ere yet the Spanish cavalier 

For this new world set sail, 
Ere yet the Padres came anear 

San Gabriel's sunny vale, 
Ere yet the thirst for gold drew men 

Across the western hills. 
I rippled down this rocky glen, 

The happiest of rills. 

The shadows of the spreading oak 

Oft lay upon my breast; 
Oft through the brown madronas broke 

The bear upon his quest. 
Past starry yuccas to my brink 

At many a crimson dawn 
The mountain lion came to drink. 

And oft a timid fawn. 

The golden moments came and went 

Of many a sunny year, 
And still I rippled on, content 

And solitary here. 
At times a weary miner came 

And quaffed my cooling stream. 
At times T saw the camp fire flame 

Of hardy hunters gleam. 



145 



A Canuck down South. 

Though oft I paused to hear some bird 

Trill In the leaves above, 
A maid I never saw nor heard. 

Nor knew the name of love. 
Oh, there was never rivulet 

So merry in a glen; 
But now I never can forget, 

Nor happy be again. 

She came in thoughtless girlish mood. 

The dizzy trail along. 
Upon my ferny marge she stood 

And listened to my song. 
I saw her and I leapt for glee 

In many a lucent wave. 
And when she stooped to dnnk from me 

My very heart I gave. 

She passed, and now no more I sing 

Among the granite hills; 
Instead, my ceaseless murmuring 

The sombre canon fills. 
Oh, ye to whom that maid divine 

Hath also heartless been. 
Come join your mournful plaint with mine. 

The Pool of Sant' Oline. 



146 



n^^SiK^MSiK'Si]smKSi'AUX^!^S^K^i^i:^l^iM^ 



ROUGHING IT. 



The luxuries of to-day are the neces- 
saries of to-morrow. We Ihad been 
blessed in Camada with a comfortable, 
well-built and well-fumished home, and 
had followed our own habits and cus- 
toms. But in California we, in company 
with thousands of other winterers, found 
ourselves o'h-''lccd to conform to new cus- 
toms, adopt new habits and rough it 
somewhat disagreeably in a house lack- 
ing many conveniences, and which, while 
said to be fumiathed, resembled nothing 
else so much as a Canadiaai home after 
seizure for rent, inasmucih as it contained 
only the bare necessaries whidh cold- 



147 



A Canuck down South. 

hearted justice deems imperatively requi- 
site for tlie existence of even a bank- 
rupt. 

One rents a fumished hou^ in Sierra 
Madre witliout the formaJlity of am in- 
ventory, but one lias toi pay renit in ad- 
vance, the landlord taking no risks of 
one's death before the month is up; and 
as tihe first month's rent vs^ouild pay for 
the entire funniture, making an inven- 
tory would be too much like work foo* 
the average Sierra Madran. We could 
probaibly have taken away the hooise at 
the expiry of our six months' term with- 
out amy questions being askfd— ait all 
events, we thought we had paid about 
ail that it was worth. 

In our ease, however, we heard long 
after that there had been an inventory. 
The house agemt from wfhbm we had tak- 
en the cottage knew nothing of it, and 
no tenant ever saw it, but it reposed in 
the dhaiige of a friend of our estimable 
landlady, our landlady being an absen- 



148 



RougMng It. 

tee, and afforded the lady "wiho held it 
the coTigefiiial pleaisune of privately ia- 
veetigaiting tbe damage done by each out- 
going vandal, and retailing it to her 
cronies over a cup of tea. No official 
compilaint had ever been lodged, but by 
this merciful dispensation of pi'C'vidence 
a certain stratum of society wias enter- 
tained and occupied at a very small ex- 
pense. I imagine the inventory ran 
about as follows. It will do for mamy a 
cottage in tlhe place, and, indeed, Dio- 
genes saj's thalt a't least two invalids lay 
down and died of sheer chagrin when 
they heard how luxuri'ously we lived. 

Inventory. 

Beet bedroom — ^The usual hard-wood 
set found in seaside hotels, bureau mir- 
ror making a hat on the left ear appear 
to be on straight, carpet made by Noah 
after he had troddem the wine-'prese. 

"VVoiwt bedroom — One cheap folding- 
bed, variegated with a chintz front, war- 



149 



A Canuck down 8outh. 

ranted better tlian an alarm clock at 
daybreak, one enamelled cbair, fonnerly 
■w!hit€. T!he occupant of itliis room 
mlg^Kt use the kitchen sink for a wash- 
Sband and finish dressing at the mirror 
in tihe other room. The floor had a 
straw matting on parts of it. 

Dining-room — HardWood table and four 
chairs. There wouldn't have been room 
for any more, anyway. When we had 
guests, we moved the table into the par- 
lor. This room ailso oointained a diminu- 
tive stove, called a 'Ohromo/ and it 
was one. It was spavined in the o£E 
hind leg, and was rarely on speaking 
terms with the dbimney. 

Parlor — One antique rug (amtique 
BO>unds better than antiquated), eked out 
wit3i pieces of straw matting, an in- 
toxicated bamboo easel warranted to fall 
upon the nearest person, a visdtor for 
choice, in order to afford a theme for 
conversation. (' How horrid ! I do 
hope it did not hurt you. No ? How 



150 



Roughing It. 

fortunate. It didn't injure your bon- 
net ? No ? I'm glad. It's sucli a 
beautiful bonnet ; last year's styles were 
obarming, weren't tney ?') There was a 
bamboo lounge in the parlor, the only 
comfortable piece of furniture m iJie 
house, and there were six dhairs, no two 
alike, none uplholstered, and tihree were 
rockers. There were two small tables. 

Cutlery, kitchen utensils, china (no, 
I mean crockery), and linen to match. 
We had napkins on Sunday, till our 
own supplies turned up. 

In describing their oontcmts, I have 
incidentally mentioned all the rooms of 
<mr house, except the kitchen, which 
could be called a room only by courtesy, 
The architects of the houses in Sierra 
Madre were dyspeptic, and always forgot 
to make provision for the kitchen, wihioh 
had to be subsequently added by making 
use of a cupboard. I do not think tihere 
was a kitchen in the place any bigger 
than the buffet in a Pullman car, and 



151 



A Canuck down South. 

some were so small that it was impos- 
sible to avoid 'barking' one's elbows. Be 
it understood, once for all, that the 
whole time we were housekeeping in Ar- 
cadia, Ave had to do our own work. Had 
we been willing even to pay twenty 
dollars a month for a domestic, we would 
have had to put her in the cellar, or 
sleep there ourselves, the second contin- 
gency being the more probable in the 
land of freedom, where even the wash- 
lady pursues her vocation 'to accommo- 
date/ and from whom we feel that, we 
should receive our laundrj'- on bended 
knees. We did our own work, I repeat, 
and my share of it was that of Robert 
Louis Stevenson, the lighting of the fire 
and the preparation for if not always of 
the breakfast. The Princess seldom rose 
until she had her matitudinal cup of tea, 
but when she did arise, my labors of the 
day were over. 

The lighting of the fire is a question 
which has disturbed many a household, 



152 



Roughing It. 

and it is a ^ise husiband who bows to 
the inevitable. When we first saw our 
kitdaen it had at one side a pretty little 
mechanism that I thought shooild be 
placed upon the parlor mantel. I was 
looking for my magnifying glass in order 
to ettudy the details when the house 
agent said with enthusdasm, 
'There! what do you think of thait?' 
'It's very pretty/ I said, hut why isn't 
^A> im the parlor under a glass case? And, 
excuse me, hut what is it ' 

Mr. T- groaned. 

'What is it!' he re-eohoed. 'Why, man, 
that's the stove, one of the best in the 
place.' 

And it was the stove, the only cooking 
stove we had, if I except the gasoline 
demon we knew better than to experi- 
ment with, not being certificated en- 
gineers. And on that microscopic thing, 
and in its still more microscopic oven we 
cooked many a good meal. Our Thanks- 
giving turkey was cooked in it. We 
cooked the front half the day before and 



153 



A C amuck doton South. 

the rear half on Tlianksgiviiig Day prop- 
ping up the half that woiildn't go into 
the oven by resting it on a chair. 

The lightioiig of that stove was an ope- 
ration of exceeding nicety, and was ac- 
complished as follows. I first put in 
four square inches of newspaper, prefer- 
ably an aniti-British editorial from the 
Los Angeles 'Times/ which was not 
merely always certain to be dry, but 
contained so many inflammable state- 
ments that I kept sucih clippings in a 
tin box for fear of spon'taneous combus- 
tion. I then added a sHver of dry wood, 
or a split mastoh, and topped off with a 
spliuiter of live oak. If the live oak was 
green, as it generally was, I added a 
spoonful of coal oil, and weoiit out 
through the window. When th« meal 
was cooked, we blew out th.e fire. 

The fuel used in Sierra Madre was 
scrub oak cut by the Mexicans on the 
waste lands, and sold the same day at 
about eight dollars per cord, and a soft 
coal from New Mexico, which sold at 



154 



Roughing It. 

eleven dollars per ton. The ooal burned 
a-way -vvitli great rapidity, and the scrub 
oak -would go out the instant one's at- 
tention was relaxed. There was no x>os- 
sibility of maintaindng a fire through the 
night unless one sat up with it, the 
stoves were so miserably small. We 
sometimes got a little comfort by taking 
them to bed with us els foot-warmers, 
but notwithstanding all our ingenuity, 
there was seldom a morning during our 
atay thart; it did niO(t require a great effort 
of will to put foot to the floor or when 
the thermometer in the room registered 
higher than foiiy-five. K one made a 
bolt to the open air with his clothes over 
his arm, and dressed there, the air waa 
balmy enough, but a modesit man like 
myself did this but seldom. 

The hiou'se had no attic, but to make 
things even it had a cellar, wihere the 
wind piped eerily through the night. 
There also all tiie cats of the nedghbor- 
hood held nightly revel just under my 
bed, a single thickness of planking inter- 



155 



A Canuck down South. 

vening. As the cellar was reached onlv 
by an outside door, a white-robed, shiver- 
ing figure, clutching a huge navy re- 
volver, might often have been seen 
stealthily stealing through the gloom 
beneath the starry canopy of heaven to 
apply the cloture to that inliarmonious 
gathering; and five minutes after, when 
I had got back to bed and had jusft be- 
gun to distinguish my feet from lumps of 
ice, the charivari would recommence. 
It did m> good to stop holes or lock 
doors, the cats pawed their way in, bur- 
rowing like gophers,and as for shooting 
any, tJie man who has not tried to fire 
a revoivei- when he can not see it, does 
not know how far astray a point blank 
shot will go. 

Tins kind of house and this kind of 
dscomfort is ehared by the bulk of those 
wh.0 wTnter in California for their bealth. 
But hotel life, which we allso tried, and 
life in the cities, is charming. 

^Vfter we liad been some time in Cali- 
fornia Diogenes and I developed an in- 



156 



Roughing It. 

tense scorn of the useless, lazj' life of 
the natives, and decided (for a week) to 
set a shinixig example to tihe State. It 
was not long' before we had devoured all 
the chickens of the neigh^borhood, but 
that is not saying much, the chickens of 
California are raised by incubator, and 
fed by band, and cost their weight in 
gold to bring tfeem inbo the world. And 
they no sooner see the kind of country 
they have got into than they pine away. 
Diogenes and I decided thait; there was 
money for two clever men in a chicken 
raincb, and we started one. It was a 
beautiful ranch, electro-plated ■wire fence, 
fine view of ithe Sierra, one clump of 
grass six inches square, imiported at great 
expense, and a hen house tihat was the 
pride of Sierra Madre. The incubator 
was exquisately polished and varnished, 
and the oil we burned cost a fabulous 
sum, while the thermwmeter was one 
that could give any other tlhemiometer in 
the place a start of ten degrees and beat 
it out of sight before the afternoon. It 



157 



A Canuck down South. 

had one of <tho<se affairs in it far re^ater- 
ing ihe maximum temperaiture and we 
tad only to told it over the lajnp a few 
mimutes, and it would keep up the tem^ 
penature of that incuhaitor during the 
coldest nigiht, even if the lamp went out, 
Diiogeniea called me one night just to see 
it. We were shivering, wiith blankets 
■vvraipx/ed round us like Pueblo Indians, 
but through the glass of the incubator 
tha/t needle in the ineade of the thermo- 
meter was sticking as close to a hundred 
as if the lamp hadn't been exihausted 
long before. And the mercury wasn't 
near it, either, But we never seemed to 
get any chickens, so we used to buy 
tihem from the butcher ajnd x>ay sixty 
cents apiece for them, and it took two to 
make a meal for one person. 

Besides, we had trouble with the in- 
cubartor. It is bad enough to see a full- 
sized hen fussing over a solitary dhick, 
but it passes the bounds of tiolerance to 
see a big incubator clucking about the 
yard, scratching the paint off the fence 



158 



Roughing It. 

and trj'ing to convince a drooping 
chicken that it is fattening diet. And 
to see an incubator stand ruefully beside 
the dirigation tamks while some duck- 
ling swam out on the. "w^ter was enough 
to give a man a delirium, No, when we 
began to have dreams like that, we knew 
it was our reason or the incubator that 
would have to go. 

We wouid ha\e gone into market 
gardening but that seemed overdone. 
A^'egetables were a drug on the market. 
When I first dealt with John Wee Oieii 
Yen, and asked bii-m for tyenty-five cents 
worth, he got down, phlegmatically, smd 
began to unhamesis his team. 
'What's the matter?' I said. 
'Me keep horses; you keep rest,* he 
said, and John's vegetable waggon was 
larger than a hay cart. But they can 
not grow a vegetablel in California to 
compare, for taste, with thiose of the 
East. They are like the cliimate, mono- 
tonously alike. Of! what use is a pump- 
kin that cannot be moved without a der- 



A Canuck down South. 

rick and a team of horses, if it wtill not 
make a New England pumpkin pie? 
Califomians will say we didn't know how 
to cook them. Our butcher used that 
excuse. He had sold us the last hen in 
the state, one wihieh had been brought 
in by the early missio^naries, and of 
course I broke my carver on it, and sub- 
sequently splintered the axe-handle. 
Then I coonplained to him. 
'How long did you cook it?' he asked. 
'An hour.' 

'You should have cooked it three.* 
And when I told him that witli fuel 
as expensive as it was he would have to 
bring me a government contract with 
each hen, he merely laughed at me. 

After our unfortunate experience with 
the chicken corral, Diogenes and I cast 
about for some other occupation. At 
first our inclinations were towards some- 
thing involving brain work, something 
which we could do while eittdng on the 
verandah smoking and discussing plans. 
But after a while we realized that there 



160 



Roughing It. 

is no labor ga ddignified ag manual labor. 
We would become 'bomy banded sons of 
toil, and after a few years maybe we 
migbt become walking delegates and Na- 
poleonic leaders of a strike. We asked 
the Princess wbat sbe tbougbt. Sbe 
told us sbe tbjougbt tbat 'was about tlhe 
kind of workmen we would be and of 
course, that compliment froan her settled 
the miatter. So we went out to see if 
there was any job to be bad washing 
oranges. In some localities, apparently, 
where the fogs reach, oranges get touched 
with a kind of smut, wihich ig scnibbed 
off after plucking, and laborers get about 
three cents per box of two hundred. We^ 
made six cents each that day, enough to 
make a Mexican feel like a nabob. We 
would have miade more only we fell into 
a discussion as toi what bank we would 
put our savings into, and, of course, our 
discussion was so briglht that tlie other 
workers crowded round till the rancher 
came and sadd he would save us the 
trouble of quarrelling on the subject. 



161 



A Canuck down South. 

We decided after that one experience 
of the grasping nature of capitaliats that 
we would be our own masters, aaud with 
our wealth buy up the mortgage on tliat 
man's estate and squeeze him. I am glad 
now that we did not, for we might have 
found ourselves like anany others in the 
region, tied for eternity to a ranch that 
barely paid expenses. 

There was an old mine tunnel in the 
hills nearby, and we decided that A^ihere 
there was a mine shaft there was sure 
to be gold and silver. We had not read 
mine prospectuses for nothing. The 
mine was deserted, but we knew that 
the general thing is that the poor fellow^ 
whio dig in and blast and get 'busted,' en 
a mine, leave off about six inches from 
the blind lead, or the hanging wall, or 
the mataix; so we determined to open 
up tiiat half-foot. But there seemed to 
be a hiteh somewhere, and after boring 
a hole and examining the rock we went 
back home and spent the afternoon 



162 



Roughing It. 

pleasantly and instructively studying 
Mark Twain and Bret Hart. 

Witih renewed courage we decided to 
prospect, especially as thie guide books 
declared that th« SierTa/ of Southern Oali- 
fomia have never been thoroughly pros- 
pected, and ought to contain unibold 
mineral wealth. For a few days we wan- 
dered among the canyons and peaks, oc- 
casionally forgettdng our object in the 
charm of the scenes. On the lower 
slopes the soft glow of the purple penste- 
mon and the deep indigo of the lark- 
spur diversified the scene, mth an ooca- 
sionail flaaih of the scarlet larkspur, which 
is indigenous to California. The lavender 
tulips nodded across the plaans, and in 
the washes the white petals of the tall 
bush poppy shone around a golden cen- 
tre. Hei-e and there among the rocks 
the mimulus was wreathing its orange 
and red, and the soft purple of the 
nightshade lighted up its deeper hues. 
The open slopes were thronged ■s'vTith sun- 
flowers, and with the advent of spring 



163 



A Canuck down South. 

the ptoppies had sprung up, like higli- 
lamdera from the correi, and their fiery 
cax)98 "was blaziimg far and wide, vi-ible 
even to the woiwiering sailors far out at 
sea for the color of the poppy is a land- 
mark to the mariner upon that dreamy 
ocean. 

On the higiher levels or slopes the cbap- 
arrel robed the hills in shaggy green, the 
mountain streams sang as they leaped 
from cliff to cliff. The wihite sage uplift- 
ed its tall spires, tlie verba santa attract- 
ed the eye and the fragrance of the white 
and bluish blocm of the miountain ma- 
hogany wag upon the air. Here the 
yucca lifted its lilies, the bimch grass 
grew and tlie veteihes trailed their gar- 
laids of purple and green over the rusty 
wihite of the wild buekAviheat. Willows 
and cofttooiwioods, sycamores and live 
oaks deepened the shadows, ferns de- 
pended from moisit banks, and far aloft, 
tihoiisands of feet above U5 we could 8ec 
the sunlig'nt silvering gdgaintic masses of 
granite, and hear the breezes whispering 



I6t 



RoiKjhing It. 

aniiong Uie pines that wound intermin- 
ably upwards around the flainks of tlie 
Sierra, until lost amid the azure clouds 
where tlhe condor was %viheeling upon 
motdonless wings. That was the kind of 
day labor Diogenes and I delig'lit'ed in, 
but we fiound no gold. 

One day Diogenes came to me and said 
we had been a pair of fools. I asked him 
to explain. 

'Well, we haven't gone the rigiht way 
about our prospecting. Listen to this. 
It's an acoount of the disciovery of on© 
of the nidhesit veins in Colorado. 'Two 
prospectors who were grub staked by Mr. 
Tabor (since Sena»tor), chanced to be 
cnossdng Fryer Hill and sat down to im- 
bibe casual refreshment from a jug of 
whiskey. By the time they had become 
satisifactopily refreshed all kinds of 
ground looked alike to them, and \vithout 
the slightest justification they began to 
dig w^here they had been sitting. They 
uncovered the ore body of the famous 
Little Pittsburg mine.' 



165 



A Canuck down South. 

There was silence for a few momeirts. 
Then I leaned forward. 

*^Did yoai say wliiskey?' 

'Yes.' 

'Do you think it was United States 
whiskey ?' 

Diogenes did not say a word for a few 
minutes. Then his face lengthened. 

'Because/ I continued, 'if it has to be 
Uuited States whiskey, I am a pnoihibi- 
tiondst.* 

I h.ave always felt proud that when 
the choice etood between a gold mine 
wa)th (United States) whiskey amd a 
poor but honest Ufe with prohibition 
principles, I chose the better part. Di- 
ogenes has not yet discovered a gold 
mine, but I have my suspiciioma that he 
has tried to. 

Throughout southern California, as in- 
deed throughout any other country dis- 
trict where the residents are not them- 
selves producers of their own food, the 
tradespeople call at tihe house for orders. 
The procession used to begin about seven 



166 



Roughing It. 

in the onorning in my time, when the 
grocery boy would pound on the door un- 
cea'singly until I rose from my beauty 
sleep to chide him. On tihe banks of 
the lower St. Lawrence they are more 
courteous. They don't knock; they just 
come right into the bedroom. I have 
known a bowing and gesticulating butch- 
er enter the room of an astonished cus- 
tomer, with a leg of mutton in his hand, 
and expatiate on its merits while the 
mistress of the house said naughty words 
about him with her head under the bed- 
clothes. After the grocer's boy would go 
away, happy for having ruined my rest, 
the milkman would drive up, deposit haa 
self-sealing jars and rumble dowm the 
avenue. Then there would be a breath- 
ing sipell for bath and breakfastb. 

When I say bajth I speak with a men- 
tal reservation. There was one bath in 
Sierra Madre, and when it was being 
brought in itt frightened the horses worse 
than a steam roller, and the Mexicans 
couldn't be got to go near the 'house 



167 



A Canuck down South. 

where it wa3 for love or monoy. The 
man who had tha/t bath kept it in his 
parlor, and those of us who were not so 
fortunate tJiought he only did it justice. 
Diogenes and I occasioinally turned the 
hcse on ourselves in the wood-shed, but 
as a general rule we bathed in sections, 
beginning at the head on Sunday morn- 
ing and mauaging to reach the feet by 
Saturday night. As the largest vessel 
in the house was a dishpan, our ten- 
acity of purpose can be understood. We 
would have preferred the hose process, 
but the water company sent us a letter 
tiat general irriga/tion was only permit- 
ted three days in each month. 

After breakfast came a man who was 
our thorn in the flesh. Either he sel- 
dom had the article we w^tnted or was of 
the opinion that it was not good for us, 
for he invariably spent half an hour trj-- 
ing to persuade us to take something else 
and as he had a monopoly, the discussion 
usually terminated by his having ,his way. 
He had a cheerful air of superiority 



168 



Roughing It. 

about him tiiat made one willing to be 
an asisassdn, and lie was a lightning cal- 
cvlator. While I would be lalboriously 
calculating with pencil and paper what 
pounds and fractions of our purchasea at 
varying prices and half cents came to, he 
would nonchalantly jot the total down 
in our book and drive away to infitruct 
some one else in arithmetic. And to 
make matters worse, after I had work- 
ed the sum out by algebra, which is 
easier to me than arithmetic, I would 
find that he had been right after all. 

Next came the fishmonger with oystew 
in tirs and fresh salmon and halibut 
from the ocean and northern streams. 
After him the wine merchants would be- 
gin to arrive, half a dozen of them some- 
times, and every one would insist upon 
my taking a glass Whether I intended to 
purchase or not. By the time they were 
dtie Diogenes would be on hand to see 
that I had some one to help me, for it is 
too serious an insult to think of refusing 
the proffer. It would have been kindlier 



A Canuck down Ronth. 

to kick t,h,9m downstairs. I may say, 
•n passant, that I do no-t too emtliusias- 
ticaUy adniire the wines of California, 
ex<>e(pt the clarets, than which. I do not 
hope to drink better; and claret was 
fifty cents per gallon in Sierra Madre. 
Water soon became good enough to wash 
in. The brandy of California requires 
to be tried to be appreciated, and after 
a man has thoughtlessly taken a glass of 
it, he is verj'' likely to be tried himself, 
in the police court, for it is nearest to 
being liquid fire of any drink I know, 
and creates a perfect frenzy of intoxics^- 
tion. Diogenes says so, too. Experte 
credo, he «SLys. 

John Chinaman did not come with the 
commonalty; his visits took place in the 
afternoon.'?. John is an important fac- 
tor in California life. He has settled 
the servant girl question, for which he 
merits the legion d'hoomeur. Easternei^ 
at first shrink from his cat-like tread in 
the house, but soon become accustomed 
to it and by and bye get to wonder how 



170 



Roughing It. 

they ever tolerated Sally with her fol- 
lowers and her objection to cap and 
apron. In Sierra Madre John entered 
oi ly incidentally into domestic life. He 
sold U3 onr vegeitables and washed oar 
linon. I will not isay that the same 
Chinaman did both, but I would hessi- 
tate to swear to the contrary in a court 
of laAv. I know that tbere were two ri- 
val markei gardeners for John Wee Ohen 
Yen, or Sunny Slope, assured us with 
dreadful solemnity that the *oller feller* 
ill^gated A\'ith sour water, though where 
he could nave got it in tha^t r<^on of 
mountain streams I am unable to say. 
Those who judge Chinamen from the un- 
dersized specimens of eastern ciities will 
be surprisi*^ when told that John in 
California is a stalwart, broad-shouldered 
fellow, who would cut a pretty figure in a 
r€gimonit of the line. His visits wee* 
among the pleasant events of our mon- 
otonous days. He brought an air of 
cheerfulness with him that was con« 
tagious. His n<^ver imduly familiar man- 



171 



A Canuck down South. 

ner always seemed to be conveying the 
eentimenit thit it was good to be alive, 
and that life had grown ever so much 
mere delightful since our arrival. When 
we paid him in cash, he grnw aa shy as a 
maiden receiving her first offer, and was 
ill at ease until th^e mercenary transaction 
was over. Wben we ceased so to trouble 
him he would smile all over and 'mlark* 
it on the wall with such delight that we be- 
gan to think his country must be an Eden 
for impecunious men and to credit him 
with an insane desire to cover cottages 
with Ids quaint hieroglyphics. And when 
he went away he alw^ays said good-by so 
heartily that it sounded like a benedic- 
tion. One couldn't spank the enfant 
terrible for an hour after. There are bad 
Chinamen, I have no doubt, very bad 
Ohdnamen, but before despising the Chi- 
nese naition it would be well for other 
nations to ascertain whether they, too, 
have not a few black sheep. If John 
likes to hit the pipe a, little too much,- 
John Bull and Brother Jonathan are by 



172 



Roughing It, 

no means proihibitioniats, and while John 
is revelling in heavenly dreams that even 
opium will not bring to the others, John 
Bull 13 belaboring his wife and Brother 
Jonathan challenging all creation to a 
round. All three may end in the same 
policei court in California, and John may 
get the heaviest sentence, it is true, but 
that does not settle the superiority of 
race or morals. 

W« were not the only people who were 
roughing it in southern California. When 
the winds begin to blow keenly in the 
east, and the fallen leaves lie thick upon 
the sward, when the lilies that toil not 
disappear, so also disappear from familiar 
haunts others who do not spin, and like 
to whom Solomon in all his glory wa.^ 
never an-ayed. The genus tramp, the 
palmers of the nineteenth century, steal- 
ing rides when they can, begging or walk- 
ing, succeed, in some mysterious way, in 
crossing the arid plains and the cloud- 
hooded Rockies, and become a genuine 
and not altogether safe affliction in the 



173 



A Canuck down South. 

Laud of Sunshine. I do not think the 
Princess ever turned a beggar from the 
door, for she has a maxini that a meal 
can do no haxm to any one, but by and 
by our tramps began to flock ia from all 
quarters and capped the climax by steal- 
ing our very dinner on one occasion, af- 
ter having been given a good breakfast. 
60 at last I put up a sign at the turn of 
the road as follows: — 



SOAP! 
. Tramps Accommodated with Soap, 
Water Supplied Opposite. 



This sign served its purpose, especially 
after I had erased the private marks of 
the fraternity. It was a source of plea- 
sure to Diogenes and me to sit on the 
verandah and see a tramp come expec- 
tantly up the road till within sight of 
that sign. He would go up to it, and 
BometiTOee we would hear him solUoquize. 



174 



Rougliing It. 

'Soap, what's tihat ? I never heard <)i 
it. Water supplied opposite. Who wants 
water ? Only a fool would come to Cali- 
fomy for waiter. It looks riskV' I gtiess 
ril try next door.' And off he would go, 
looking anything but happy. 

Pasadena and Los Angeles turned all 
the itramps they caught to stone-break- 
ing. One day was enough; they never 
stopped running till they reached the city 
limits. Another town kept a reservodr of 
water in^to which it tossed them, like 
witches of old and to the same purpose. 
Before we found it absolutely necesaar>' 
to set our faces against them, I occasion- 
ally spent a pleasant half hour with a 
tramp. These fellows are> not lacking in 
intelligence, indeed it is their stock in 
trade. They expend as much «nergy and 
use up as mudb intellect in wheedling a 
dinner amd avoiding work as would make 
a successful senior partner in a large 
business. And what a miserably poor re- 
turn tihey get upon their investment. The 
man who, whether with truth or false- 



175 



A Canuck down South. 

hood, at least entertained me with a 
description of hi3 picturesque life and 
"svith tales of places he had visited, will 
?cme day be tossed from the car upon 
which ho is stealing a ride, and the cor- 
oner "wnll ask no embarrassing questiona 
of the brakemen. 

One of the customs we had brought 
wi-th us from Canada was that of using 
ice in hot "weather to preserv^e food and 
to cool our drinks, and, of course, we 
immediately ordered ice to be supplied 
daily. But we countefrmanded that or- 
der after the first ball came in. We 
found that we had luxuriously been con- 
suTO.ing a dollar's worth of ice to pre- 
serve a fifty-cent breakfast and the ice 
never seemed to cool anything, anyway. 
California was always surprising us in 
eome such simple matter. If we wanted 
a drink of cold water, we naturally ran 
it fresh from the tap, but Avhen Diogenes 
wanted one he let it sitand quite a while, 
and his was cooler than ours. And be 
told us that the use of lice was a]l tom- 



176 



Roughino it. 

foolery so far as preserving meat was 
ooncemed. 'Hot weatliea' here,' he said, 
'may cook your meat, (but it will not 
spoil it. But doui't lay in a Mipply in 
rainy weather; or you will kave to move 
into the next lot in an hour or two And 
you'll be fortunate if the meat doesn't 
follow/ All the cortJtages have a kind of 
screen box nailed up on their shadiest 
side, and in this butter, meat and other 
perishable articles of diet are placed, in 
the open air, covered, to prevent their 
drying up. 

Everj'thing, or almost everything, was 
sold in Sierra Madre by weight, and 
thi** frequently included the purchaser. 
Travelling vans carry spring scales, such 
as are prohilbited by Canadian law, and 
no two of these scales agree. The scale 
of one of our tradespeople made our 
grocer's pound ^^-eigh nineteen ounces, 
and I us?ed to lie awake at night trying 
to decide whether, if I made trouble, the 
*roce(r or the other man would alter his 
scale. But the spring balance was not 



177 



A Canuck down South. 

the only scale whicli deceived. Having 
gone to Sierra Madre for my health, 1 
naturally was wont to weigh myself 
r^iilarly. At our groceir's I weighed 
a humdred and twenty-four pounds. Two 
dayg later I weighed a hundred and 
twenty-seven at another grocer's, and 
went albout praising Sierra Madre for it« 
curative powers. A week later I was 
weighed at X's, and then turned the 
beam at a hundred and thirt3\ I be- 
gan to fchink tha-t I woidd soon i^uire a 
derrick or a jack-screw to move myself 
about. But a day later I took to my 
bed and sent for the doctor and the un- 
dertaker. I had beep, weighed at my 
grooeir's again and had lost six pounds in 
twenty-four hours. 



178 






DERRINGER DICK, THE BICYCLIST. 

Derringer Dick was a Western man, who 

was always on the shoot, 
He had twenty nicks in his pistol butt, 

each nick for a gone galoot; 
He'd a private graveyard all his own, 

was coroner of Lone Trees, 
And sat in state on the cold defunct, and 

smilingly took the fees. 

But Derringer Dick fell on evil days; a 

tenderfoot crowd swarmed in. 
And shootin' at sight didn't go no more. 

He sighed fur the might hev been, 
And he folded his hands, and pined away, 

and longed fur the happy land. 
Where a feller kin do pretty much ez he 

wants, and folks like a man with sand. 

One day, ez he sat on his lone front stoop 

a-cleanin' his rusty gun. 
He saw a bicyclist comin' along, a-scorch- 

in' just like fun; 



179 



A Canuck Dnirn Sottllt. 

And Derringer Dick his eyes lit up ez they 

hadn't lit fur years, 
An' he sez "I guess I'll kill some more 

ere I leave this vale of tears." 

Then Derring-er Dick laid his gun away. 

and bought fur himself a bike. 
He wobbled around in his big corral in 

a way that he didn't like, 
Fiir the blame thing bucked and balked, 

and threw poor Dick all over the place: 
But Dick was grit, and he'd mount again, 

with a dogged look on his face. 

Xow. behold at last, this westerner astride 

of his steed of steel. 
Tt was a solemn and awful sight to see 

him upon the wheel, 
He didn't wear no bicycle suit, nor put 

on a bit of style, 
But there wasn't a scorcher in the town 

could stand to his pace a mile. 



His pants was tucked in his cowhide 
boots, his old red shirt he wore, 

His long grey locks sireanied in the wind 
and a huge slouch hat upbore. 



ISii 



Den'ingei' Dick. 

And ez he wheeled into Bunker street I 
tell you he looked quite pert, 

But his eye had its old time glare that 
meant "some feller will be hurt." 



The Editor of the Bugle Horn was the 

first to come his way, 
And Dick he owed him a little grudge 

('twas all Dick would ever pay). 
He caught the editor in the back— Dick's 

gearing was seventy-four— 
And the editor of the Bugle Horn won't 

go to press no more. 

It tickled the soul of Derringer Dick as 

he heard the jury say, 
"The editor of the Bugle Horn hadn't 

orter bin in the way." 
Fur that was the selfsame verdict Dick 

had passed on many a cop 
Ez stopped a Derringer bullet when the 

other chap got the drop. 

He filed a nick on his sprocket wheel and 
mounted his bike again, 

And that afternoon another foe was re- 
moved from this world of pain. 



181 



A Canuck Down South. 

So day by day es he scorched along, 
some citizen would be missed, 

And Richard rose into high repute es a 
masterly bicyclist. 

Sez Dick to the coroner over their drinks 

when the last inquest was done, 
" Human natur's forever the same. 

Though you've called in the gun. 
Fur lording it high and ruling the roost 

and settling on the spot, 
A bicycle rough is twice ez tough ez the 

chap that hacked and shot. 

The code's the same with another name. 

It's just 'git outer my light, 
Don't cross my path, I'm a man of wrath, 

I'll do you up on sight.' 
That's how I felt in the olden time, that's 

how I'll allers feel, 
But a feller don't hev no need fur a 

gun ez long ez he rides a wheel." 







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